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."
The Truth Is Taboo? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please disregard this post as it comments on the taboo subject de jour, and I would hate to make it worse.
Skeptics are useful. (Score:4, Insightful)
Crying Wolf? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who manipulates their science, ignores contrary evidence or exaggerates the conclusions of the science in order to scare the government and/or people into more grant money.
In my case, yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got a bachelor's in physics, and although that doesn't make me a climate scientist, i think it at least qualifies me to evaluate scientific arguments on the basis of merit. . I've never read any of these papers, because I don't have the time to make myself an expert on another field. I consider myself a climate change agnostic - I have no idea whether or not it's happening.
When I hear "oh noes we are all going to die unless we stop global climate change," however, I am very skeptical. My mind puts such arguments in the same bin as the overpopulation fears of the 70's. I'll take Julian Simon over Paul Ehrlich any day. The fact that scientists who disagree are called "deniers" and "shills of industry" pushes me further away from seriously considering global warming as a possible threat, because ad hominem attacks are not science. I've read enough stories like this one [canada.com], written by a candian newspaper, to at least consider myself extremely skeptical of claims that the earth is getting warmer, humans are to blame, and that drastic changes are necessasry.
That said, I know all too well that people can make terrible arguments in support of true statements. Therefore, Until I read a series of papers about global climate change, papers that publish all of their source data, algorithms used in simulations, justifications for the use of those algorithms, and statistical analysis by qualified statisticians, I will refrain from forming a solid opinion one way or the other. Of course, the chances of that happening are exactly zero, because I don't have time to spend doing something like that. So I'll remain skeptical.
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:2, Insightful)
Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
What we need is a good, honest look at climate trends. Because words like "global warming" and "el niño" are so overused, diffused, and politicized, we have to look at this purely as a scientific study about climate trends, and the study has to be carried out by multiple parties.
And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:2, Insightful)
Here in New Zealand, we have just had a very cool summer, following on from a very cool winter. Where's some of that global warming stuff? Could have used it at the beach!
To think that we (as a human race) have a very good understanding of long-term climatic processes is just arrogance. We have models which we are always refining, but they will always just be speculation. We look back mockingly at how ignorant some scientists were 40 years ago (eg. during the 1960s many/most geologists did not accept tectonic plate theory). It is silly to think that people forty years from now won't be doing the same about us. That should be particularly true of climatic modelling. There is no robust equation for climate. People essentially just sit down and tweak the models until they get the results they expect, then use them to generate best case and worst case analysis. That folks, is hardly science.
Re:Maaan. It is not that hard to understand (Score:2, Insightful)
And this my friend is why I will always be a skeptic of all environmentalist causes. This is almost always the tact that environmentalists take. "We don't need proof, we don't need scientific evidence its obvious that change is happening and the EVIL MAN must be causing it".
Environmentalism is much more like a religion than anything else. They constantly ask everyone to change their lives based on their "say so" that man is causing irreparable damage. They rarely if ever release actual methodologies to their studies, and when they do they are quickly debunked or have huge holes in them (Like recent climate studies that dont take temperatures over the ocean into account at all, or have data collected solely from urban centers)
Re:The Truth Is Taboo? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't vote on scientific truth. For example, if even a majority of America is seen to believe in Global Warming in some kind of inane Gallup Poll, well tough noogies if the evidence shows otherwise (random pov, the reverse is also true). People's opinions DO NOT matter unless they are informed decisions rather than the "close-your-eyes-and-pick-one" sprt of decisions that are ruining this country.
Science is not politics (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, you can start by calling it "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming". If we just focus our efforts on the slow increase of merely one factor of the complex global climate system -- average temperature -- we're not going to convince anyone that there's been a significant man-made difference. However, if we could start focusing on how the climate of individual regions has changed drastically, it becomes much simpler to see and establish causality on how man-made activity has beat back glaciers, leveled mountains, polluted ecosystems, etc.
Anyway, now that we're playing politics, anything goes, including Hollywood sensationalizing. Just remember to draw clear lines between scientifically-proved fact and political slander
It sucks that science is getting attacked by political groups lately. But in the end, this will hopefully be helpful for science. People will fund "scientific" studies such as "Industrial activity has No Correlation with Climate Change" and "Creationism Explains the Origin of Species" and science will be bolstered when the data disproves these null hypotheses, which is after all how scientific method works in the first place
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:2, Insightful)
Are the politicians looking for power the paid lackeys of global capitalism....oh, hang on - global capital has huge amounts of sunk capital in existing technologies so that doesn't work...so are the politicians paid shills of the Chinese...no, hang on, they're building a coal fired power station a week so it can't be them. I think we should be told who the dastardly bank rollers are.
Could it be the socialist of whom you speak? It's a long time since I've seen a proper socialist with enough money to pay a shill, but maybe shills are cheaper than they used to be. Who are the leaders of this group? c'mon. Who are the hippy-dippy masterminds behind the great global warming conspiracy?
And just who was that on the grassy knoll? Eh? Eh?
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is true. It is also true that there is a risk and danger in public disasterbation.
And poster of the story/author of the blurb commits one of them. The poster referred to "the warmest summer US winter in years". This winter's temperatures are irrelevant to GW, AGW, NGW. Would the poster say that GW/AGW is obviously not a risk if this summer is one of the coldest US summers in recent years? The variance in annual temperatures is not part of the GW/AGW proponents' position - and rightly so.
First of all, the GW/AGW people say that the average temperature will rise. There are many ways this can happen, and a warmer winter is not necessarily one of them. Oddly most people understand this, sadly they don't think about it.
Furthermore, AGW==disaster proponents (the aforementioned disasterbators) are eager to tie anything to AGW. From tsunamis to finding whatever weather changes in your areas you wouldn't like and saying that will happen. Yes, this is the vocal minority doing it, but that's the problem; and some of them are doing it right here on
The other side of the problem is econazis hitching all of their "solutions looking for a cause" to AGW disasterbation. There are a great many things we can do that might be good to limit AGW that are good ideas even if AGW is entirely bunk. How is this bad? The more stuff is piled on to a notion the more we tend to discount it. It is also bad in that by tying these things to AGW we increase any harm or delay any benefits.
For example, as long as their is public dissent or doubt about AGW, or the costs associated with changes to limit the alleged AGW causes, anything tied to to is delayed due to doubt and suspicion, and caution. Further, if it is shown that GW is more likely to be natural than anthropogenic, or it is shown that we can't stop AGW - i,e. we've reached the tipping point as some disasterbators have claimed (and other climate researches have dismissed) then these measures lose their impetus.
When they lose their impetus and the proponents of them come back with another one, then they lose more credibility because they are suddenly looking for a cause to be the solution for. Ultimately, however, we have the instigators of the AGW hypothesis to thank for this. They stated up front that they should be changing policy and some have been shown to favor hyping the negative and downplaying any positive or non-negative aspects in order to scare the public into taking action they want done. All in the name of them being experts and us being idiots of course.
The AGW disasterbators are the greatest thereat to civil discussion and thorough research, and are their own worst enemy. And in so being, are among mankinds worst enemies.
Re:Skeptics are useful. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with reasons 1 and 2, socialists making another attempt to weaken the United States is a myth.
You can accuse socialists of many things: naivety, idiocy, overweening bureaucracy, completely failing to understand how the world works, and being too incompetent to even be allowed to organise domestic rubbish collection. All of these are valid arguments to use against socialism and socialists.
That there is any sort of significant number of socialists (or any other group) out there who champion global warming out of a cynical desire to hurt the United States is simply incorrect. It's a myth that has been spread by the shills on the other side, it sounds convincing, apparently, to a lot of Americans, but it is simply not the case.
I'm not saying that all advocates of the global warming hypothesis are worth listening too. Far from it, many are crackpots who hurt their own side simply by their support (as TFA seems to be saying). And yes the current position of the US on this issue gives many of these people a happy overlap with their anti-Americanism. Maybe there are some who intellectually dishonest enough to allow their dislike of the US to persuade them on this issue, but there is no conspiracy. It's a meme that has been spread by those with a vested interest in global warming not being acted upon.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The deciding factor (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Truth Is Taboo? (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyone's beliefs and emotions are directly involved in every decision we make and expecting the masses to make a logical and informed decision about anything is about as likely as getting everyone to agree on which lottery numbers to pick.
Whatever the cause is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Even those who support fossil fuel derived energy and the like are not immune to the cancer it causes...
Re:In my case, yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
One Thing People Forget About Global Warming (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple fact is that carbon dioxide has an extremely strong infrared absorbance and will act like the glass panes of a greenhouse. Very effectively.
It's about the same as knowing there is gravity so you can predict an apple will fall when released.
Couple that with knowing humans are spewing billions of tons of it into the atmosphere - with rates of release increasing every day - and you have a very solid basis to say that the effects of global warming will get stronger. Period.
You can argue all you want that the weather conditions people are seeing now are not global warming. And maybe they aren't. But global warming is happening and the trends will be for stronger effects.
How strong those effects are and will be can be debated, but the fact that they are coming cannot.
Blimey. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the wrong question to ask... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this question and the increasing vocalization of man made climate change die hards is this:
1. Regardless of the causation of climate change, there seems to be universal agreement that it is happening. To the degree that we don't want to be like the vast majority of critters that have ever been on this planet and become extinct, we should focus on ways of planning to adapt to the possible outcomes of climate change. Arguing over who is responsible, at some level, is simply counterproductive.
2. Once man made global warming becomes politically attractive we will begin to spend lots of tax payer money to reduce our impact on the environment. This invariably will siphon away money from other places or prevent that money from being used for something that could do more good. I don't mean to sound cold or uncaring, or even worse, ignorant on the subject of climate change. What I am suggesting is that there are a limited amount of funds to be used for what amounts to public works projects. Will funding for reducing man's impact on the environment do more good than, say, AIDS prevention? Folks smarter than me with more letters after their name than I have suggest that it will not.
Bottom line: There are more rational ways to go about this process of identifying problems and developing solutions but causes have always needed some flash and sizzle to sell to your average American. Right now, man made climate change is about as sexy an idea as you can think of that has many supporters in the scientific community. Think about it, you have natural disasters, money hungry multinational corporations, underdog scientists, Hurricane Katrina, talk of cute animals going extinct, Al Gore, dramatic film clips, the idea that the big corps are fucking it up for the common man, themes of Armageddon, etc. It actually sounds like it has elements of every thrill movie ever made. I mean, goddammit! That's a show!
So can we sit down, be rational, and allow scientists to conduct their research without having to deal with the celebrity of what they're researching? 'Fraid not.
If you feel I've said things that are provocative, watch the TED Talks lectures from the brilliant physicist David Deutsch [google.com] and the thought provoking economist Bjorn Lomborg [youtube.com] for more information.
warmest winter? so what. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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). 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.
"Global warming" is the Left's "imminent emergency" scenario which they utilize to the greatest political end economic manipulation as possible - just like the Right's "war on terror" is its "imminent emergency".
Socialism by the back door. (Score:4, Insightful)
Like Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart (a nurse by training, if you can believe that):
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. . . Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
As long as the public faces of the global warming scare are building vast energy-hogging mansions [sfgate.com], flying around the world in private jets [nytimes.com], and shooting down alternative-power proposals [cbsnews.com] that clash with their refined aesthetic sensibilities, I will assume they are all power-crazed liars and mountebanks of the ilk of Christine Stewart.
We are being asked to overturn the very edifice of free-market capitalism, on the basis of wild speculation about the significance of mere statistical noise, teased out of scant and questionable data by grant-chasing academics, and shouted hysterically by power-mad left-wing politicians who won't abide by the same draconian regulations they advocate for the rest of us. No thanks. I'm going to keep living my life as I please.
-ccm
We've "cried wolf" too many times, period (Score:3, Insightful)
We've lived under the constant spectre of doom and gloom for a long time. Everything is bad, bad for us, and going to cause the death of civilization as we know it. Even just enumerating the big bad ones would take me a while; I caught the tail end of nuclear doom, just in time for a segue into environmental doom. I remember the tail end of "Communism is going to crush us". I remember numerous predictions that basically had us all dead by now. I know we were supposed to run out of oil in the mid-90s. I remember when the Japanese were going to crush us with their mighty economy. I remember how our school system was going to doom us. (That story hasn't changed much in 20 years, really.) I remember how Reagan's policies were going to cause certain world war. We've been on the verge of major plague now for years and years, bird flu is merely the latest virus du jour. I remember just this last year stories about the interest rates going up and how that was bad and going to hurt the economy, followed a few short weeks later by stories about how the interest rates going down was bad and was going to hurt the economy. So help me, I've seen stories about the low unemployment rate being proof our economy was doomed!
I remember more doom than I can even enumerate in a single paragraph.
I also think it's important to point out the ever-increasing sophistication of marketing techniques, especially as they increasingly feed back into politics and these claims of doom. Regardless of the truth of global warming, many people are selling global warming doom. Why are they selling it? Because it's being bought. The news sells doom, because bad news brings more eyeballs. Doom, doom, doom everywhere.
And only a vanishing fraction of what we're being sold, be it doom, consumer product claims, or politicians is true. After a while, we can't help but notice this, and I think the general public is becoming increasingly suspicious of this sort of selling, on all levels. What's so special about today's predictions of doom? Why should I trust that this shampoo will make me sexy? I think this skepticism is all of a kind.
I don't know how this is going to turn out in the end, but at least for the topic at hand, I think you can expect a growing AGW backlash over the next few months. For some reason, in these past few months AGW-advocates turned up the volume to eleven and starting selling like never before, and I think they've seriously overplayed their hand by selling it too hard. Anybody who can survive economically in the US in this environment is becoming increasingly cynical about "selling" of all kinds.
(I say the US specifically because we seem to be farthest along the advertising/selling curve; even my English acquaintances who have lived here tell me we seem to be deluged in ads by comparison to them. If you don't become cynical about people selling you things, you will go bankrupt in the US; even as we have become immensely more wealthy, the number of things available for purchase has gone up even faster. Who in 1960 could bankrupt themselves on buying DVDs? Even if you say "but they had albums", well, so do we, only even more so.)
Of course, there will be two natural responses: The AGW advocates will try to make their presentations that much more slick, while the AGW-skeptics will become increasingly organized and therefore creating slick sales pitches too. Very few people have been seriously fighting AGW in a large-scale, organized way. (Not zero, but very few.) I expect that will change. It's going to be a warzone out there, with the biggest casualty being the truth.
(All-in-all, I expect the AGW people who seem to have cranked the volume up would have been better off leaving well enough alone.)
This is all independent of the truth or falseness of the AGW claims.
Increasingly, the market for doom is just getting tapped out. There's only such much worry available, even if you stoke it, and there's just too damned many people trying to tap it.
Re:get your analogies right (Score:5, Insightful)
In the history of climate research, scientists have seriously warned about global warming only once so far. The evidence is strong, the consequences are potentially devastating, and it appears to be happening faster than anybody initially thought.
Not so. My parents' generation (now 50) was told that if they didn't stop driving their gas guzzling cars NOW, the majority of the world would be desert by the time their children (me) reached 20. I'm a bit over 20 now, and the precipitation levels in the semi-arid area in which I live have been, while not record highs, quite a bit higher than in the previous decade.
Do you have any idea how many times the 'earth doomers' have said we were going to kill ourseles off? If not global warming, then global cooling, over-population, thermonuclear war, genetic (plant) modification, etc. - and all their projected times for extinction or some other cataclysmic life-ending event are well in the past. For instance, I distinctly recall hearing in elementary school that by the year 2000, the world would be too over-populated to feed itself. This, to gullible and impressionable kids! That's reprehensible.
It's not about crying wolf (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you notice this sounds exactly like the start of an argument for intelligent design?
We have models which we are always refining, but they will always just be speculation. We look back mockingly at how ignorant some scientists were 40 years ago (eg. during the 1960s many/most geologists did not accept tectonic plate theory). It is silly to think that people forty years from now won't be doing the same about us.
The whole point of theory and evidence is so you can be relatively more confident that this is not going to happen. If the criticism of science that it might be overturned one day is sufficient to reject its conclusions, then you should always reject every conclusion, ever.
You're basically asking everyone to assume that you have some great piece of counter-evidence or theory that hasn't been thought of yet. If that were a good argument then you could "disprove" any piece of knowledge about anything, forever, and to be consistent, you'd have to. If later scientists disprove global warming theory some day, you should also reject that conclusion on the grounds that later scientists might disprove them in turn. And so on.
The whole point of science is to come up with knowledge that is less likely to be overturned than other kinds of knowledge (hearsay, religion-based, mere postulation).
That should be particularly true of climatic modelling. There is no robust equation for climate. People essentially just sit down and tweak the models until they get the results they expect, then use them to generate best case and worst case analysis. That folks, is hardly science.
Science is about evidence. Do you have any evidence of any of this happening? Is there any reason to believe you're not making it all up?
I have a hypothesis: you've just made all of this up off the top of your head but it sounds plausible to you personally. I invite you to disprove this hypothesis.
Re:get your analogies right (Score:2, Insightful)
Famine is NOT worse than ever, in fact last year was the first time in which there were more obese people than malnourished people worldwide. Famine is really only a problem in nations which follow collectivist economic principles, like Zimbabwe. If people really want to save the world, they should start by hunting down socialist politicians and shooting them all dead.
Desertification is improving dramatically. The grasslands of the Sahel are expanding, pushing back the south edge of the Sahara Desert [nytimes.com] all over North Africa.
Overpopulation is a problem, but not even remotely as bad as Erlich and his acolytes predicted. And the rate of growth is decreasing, and in many places going below zero population growth, because of the improvements in health and nutrition and well-being brought about by free-market capitalism.
-ccm
Re:In my case, yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Shorter MarkPNeyer:
I'm ignorant, aware of it, and too lazy to do anything about it, so I'll remain ignorant.
-Ted
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. I just mean to point out that in some areas of science (eg. the laws of motion of slow things where Newton is Good Enough, thermodynamics,...) we have very robust models and in others (eg. climatology, earthquake prediction and functioning of the human brain we do not). We should be careful to take all results from the weaker models with a grain of salt. The "oooh look at last winter" remark in the summary was just plain stupid - particularly in a pievce about being rational.
"... you should always reject every conclusion, ever." Nope. Just be cautious about what you say and to the degree you accept what is being said. The unwashed masses don't understand that some science is robust and other science is very tentative. I personally believe that we are having a global warming impact of sorts, but I don't believe that this is "scientifically proven" or even very strongly modelled. Reacting with alarm is not scientific. That's not to say we should not proceed with caution (ie. we are likely having an impact, therefore we should do things to lessen the impact.).
As for the tweaking of models, well that's exactly what ckimatologists do. They try to make models that describe how the climate operates. Unfortunately this is a very difficult, slow, and error prone process. You cannot set up an experiment: "Say, tomorrow I'll heat up 500cubic km of ocean and see what that does.".THis makes it very difficult to control the variables and make robust models which is why most models have "best case scenarios" saying sea levels will raise by a foot or so, and "worst case" saying by ten feet or more. The result is that we have no real predictions for what will happen.
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:2, Insightful)
"We" accept that change is happening. Whether that is part of a natural cycle "we" don't know.
"There's been evidence since the 60s..."
I was born in the 60s. When I was a child the world was supposedly facing castastrophic global cooling according to "compelling evidence".
"Now even laymen are noticing."
Yes, noticing the hype.
"If the change had happened in a single year there'd be panic but climates change slowly."
"As contributions from China and developing countries to CO2 increase the problem will excellorate."
Assuming CO2 is causing a problem at all.
"I think when coastal property worldwide is devastated then people will wake up but not before."
I think you mean "if" coastal property... These are not facts, only theories.
"Right now the environment is compensating for the worst effects but everyone seems to agree there's a limit we just don't know what that is."
Everyone seems to agree to you. Way to keep an open mind. As I said before, I've lived long enough to experience two of these foolish theories now. I'm not biting yet.
"The temperature spike has been most dramatic in the last three to five years so we may have already passed that limit."
PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!
"The situation might be reversed by spending billions today, tomorrow it'll cost trillions. Not to reverse it because that won't be possible by then but trillions in lost property and droughts."
What situation? There are no facts, just theories, and there are no solutions regardless of price. Disease, famine, droughts, catastrophes...they're really got you scared don't they?
"Kind of surprised a Kiwii would be blowing off environmental issues."
If you think a Kiwi inherently cares more, perhaps you should consider his opinion to have more value, not less. Perhaps he does care more and has thought through it better than you have. Who says he's blowing off environmental issues?
"I was there during the Millenium rollover and skin cancer was near epidemic."
Bullshit. Skin cancer has always existed. Do you know what an epidemic is? http://www.answers.com/epidemic&r=67 [answers.com] How many people do you know with skin cancer?
"I found I didn't get tanned but fifteen minutes in the sun and I'd get a burn."
There's some real science for you. I don't recall anyone ever saying that the rules for tanning and sunburn have changed at all.
Re:All you Chicken Littles should watch this.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The link to your article has nothing by that MIT professor in it.
Also, it was written by someone who obviously hasn't even seen the movie in question (Swindle). Just read the part where he says that "everybody agrees that temps are higher now than 100 years ago and CO2 is high
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.
Another funny fact about the IPCC report, which is mentioned in the film, is that there was NOT consensus among the "2500+ scientists" who "wrote" the report. In point of fact, the report was compiled in large part by bureaucrats and many of the scientists, including 1 interviewed in the "swindle" movie, had no involvement or had opposing views to the ones that were published.
One scientist, who proved that malaria would not increase due to rising temperatures (due to global warming or otherwise) told them repeatedly to remove his name from the report, which, of course, stated the worst. Obviously, they ignored him and his (correct, according to me) assessment completely and he wanted his name off the report. After much argument, he finally had to threaten legal action just to get his name removed!
I will not accept data collected and assembled in this manner to form my opinion. The fact that they are grasping at straws of credibility to hold this thing together makes this--"the most important climate change report"--absolutely and indisputably invalid. The scientific community should stand up for themselves and proclaim a "do-over".
I only mention the IPCC report because the 'swindle' movie was mainly just a response to that. It all goes back to the original post of this article: Crying wolf diminishes credibility of anthropogenic climate change "alarmists" (heroes?) as a whole.
Anthropogenic climate change may be real, but I'm reiterating that Gadwin's Law [wikipedia.org] is now in full effect with the popular invocation of the word "denier [spiked-online.com]". The debate is over, but only because we can't behave ourselves.
We may be destroying our planet with greenhouse emissions, or we may be needlessly destroying our economy with alarmism. I don't think we'll know for sure for a long time.
Personally, I've looked at the data, and I'm waiting to be convinced either way.
Re:warmest winter? so what. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, there is scaremongering, but big deal, when the media gets hold of ANY topic, there is scaremongering. It doesn't make that topic any more, or any less, valid than it was before.
The part of your post which I wanted to pick at though, is this: The reason global warming has no credibility. Global warming is controversial (as opposed to having no credibility, as you suggested) in the USA, and pretty much only the USA. It is a topic, like evolution or abortion, which is a thorny issue in America, but which the rest of the developed world has more or less already accepted and got on with their lives. The USA is very isolated in being sceptical of it. Europe certainly isn't, there are EU intiatives for each nation within the union to have a certain percentage of its electricity supplied by renewable sources within the next decade (I can't recall the specific year) and recent polls in the UK showed that 85% of people believed both in global warming and that Man is mostly to blame for it.
There are several reasons why this is the case, one being that America, put bluntly, is a very VERY conservative country on the whole, compared to the rest of the developed world. Left-wing politicians in America that may seem radical there, really aren't by our standards (though, to veer off topic, I have to raise an eyebrow in confusion at how they're doing affirmative action over there, surely doing it by race is the worst possible method imaginable and doing it by income would be a lot fairer?), right-wing politicans that may not seem radical in America (and this is just politicans, we're not counting crazy talk show hosts) seem absolutely shocking. New ideas coming from the left gain traction in the rest of the developed world a lot quicker than in America because of this.
The second reason is simply that the effects are more obvious here, birds that are normally migratory are staying in the UK all year round, animals that hibernate are
The third reason is that, put bluntly, we'd be in a lot more trouble if water levels did rise than you would be. More measures have to be taken to prevent London from flooding every year (put bluntly, it's not positioned with rising water levels in mind and half the city would be destroyed if water levels rose even a relatively small amount) and
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:3, Insightful)
The arguments that "they might be wrong" and "future scientists will laugh at us" are not good arguments against conclusions grounded in evidence. However, they are good arguments against the argument that "most scientists believe this, so it must be true."
The latter is, for the most part, the only argument usually heard for AGW. You'd think at least on slash-dot someone would be capable of presenting a scientific argument for it.
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:3, Insightful)
The point being addressed was his implication of the masses having changed their minds; they hadn't. So regardless of the *reasons* for their position (or whether or not it is accurate), my assertion was correct; the majority of scientists were *not* making the same level of fuss about "global cooling" during the 1970s.
Re:And the summary is an example of that hyping (Score:3, Insightful)