Another Climate-Change Retraction 479
jamie writes "It seems every time someone twists global-warming science into 'good news,' a retraction is soon to follow, and so it must be for Slashdot. Yesterday, the conservative Wall Street Journal published yet another apologetic claiming 'the overall effect of climate change will be positive,' by someone who (of course) is not a climate scientist. Today, Climate Progress debunks the piece, noting 'Ridley and the WSJ cite the University of Illinois paper to supposedly prove that warming this century will be under 2C — when the author has already explained to them that his research shows the exact opposite!' We went through this same process last year, with the same author and the same paper, so it's pretty embarrassing that he 'makes a nearly identical blunder' all over again."
Forbes, WSJ others (Score:5, Interesting)
Forbes WSJ FoxNews and of course all of wright wing talk/hate radio, and others , consistently misrepresent the facts of climate science, what climate scientists are saying and how climate modeling is done.
Either they're, for reasons unknown, persistent and unlucky victims of poor reporting, poor analysis and mistaken inference or there is a persistent and deliberate determination on their parts to knowingly and with malice of forethought lie about climate science to the American , British Australian and European public.
If it turns out it's the latter, we can ask some interesting questions., Since persuading people that climate change is not as the scientists represent it -a ticking time bomb we are running out of time to defuse and one whose consequences include the mass death of humans, is lying about climate science not the equivalent to shouting (no) fire in a crowded (and burning) theater?
If it is, then are they not already criminals and are they not already responsible for those deaths? I think this is called "manslaughter" and when the number of people you caused to die numbers into the millions, I think that's elevated to "crimes against humanity".
Of course the US will never go there, but what about other nations? Hasn't the US demonstrated that people who threaten Americans are subject to executive action irrespective of where they are or whether the host nation is inclined to turn them over?
Could China or Japan or Germany or Russia or any other country just legally and unilaterally decide that say, David and Charles Koch represent too much of a threat to human civilization to permit them to go on living? Would they be within their legal right to quietly see to it that the perps are silently and quietly and discretely brought to final justice?
And what about the money these organization make from their climate denialism? Isn't that money, even if it's been dispersed to their heirs and partners actually. ill-gotten gains and subject to something like international civil forfeiture? The money to cover the catastrophically high cost of attempting to turn back climate change at the last possible moment has to be extracted from someone.
Obviously this is all beyond the pale for the current times, but time change and when they change, attitudes change, often suddenly and dramatically. What was just an amusing thought experiment one day becomes harsh reality another.
Laws exist to make society livable. They are defined according and in reaction to the environment. If that environment changes dramatically, then we can expect that near future generations of people will look back see the times we are living in now quite differently than we do, just the way we look back on slavery as an abomination or the post WWII generation of Germans were completely appalled at what their parents had done.
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple calculations suggest it would cost 50 time more to mitigate any possible "global warming" than it would to simply adapt.
I suspect that I'd be wasting my breath suggesting you might want to spend even 5 minutes of your life investigating an alternative view: http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/
So yes, lets live with the (extremely unlikely) possiblility of "Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming" and just get on with our lives. Your approach is to doom future generations of the entire planet to poverty in order to fight against something that isn't even a problem.
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:1, Interesting)
All of the woes that you mention such as pollution are caused by excessive population. All the programs to try to hold the system together will do little good unless we apply very strict birth control measures to our nation as well as the rest of the world. Then those programs would work out reasonably well.
The people in Boulder Colorado are feeling global warming rather directly today. The people at the Washington Naval Yard are feeling the consequences of over population as well. Dense populations yield insanity, addictions and violence. Yet how can a politician hold office if he dares to challenge the true causes of the mess?
WSJ vs Thinkprogress?? (Score:0, Interesting)
OK, WSJ may be conservative, but if we are ranking by distance from center, WSJ is maybe one sigma to the right, while Thinkprogress is about 3 to the left.
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:5, Interesting)
A comfort lie first-worlders tell to absolve themselves of responsibility for their resource consumption. It's not people living in Cuba dumping all that plastic waste into the ocean. The average American uses the same amount of resources as 32 [nytimes.com] Kenyans.
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:5, Interesting)
While the anti-Americans world-wide are wagging their fingers at the US, China is killing itself with pollution [rainbowbuilders.org]...
Just in the news: China And California Partnership To Address Climate Change [thinkprogress.org].
It doesn't look like is an "us and them" attitude (i.e. you better stop approaching the topic from a "who's-shitting-more contest" PoV).
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's resource consumption. [nytimes.com] The planet could support double the number of people we have now if we restrained ourselves to Cuban levels of consumption.
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, I looked at the 50:1 PDF in your link. Say we assume for now it's right. What's the _long-term_ cost of not stopping it? The temperature isn't going to magically cease rising at midnight on 2100AD. The oceanic acidity isn't going to magically neutralise. The methane clathrate traps aren't going to magically un-thaw. We can't halt physics like we can halt a stock market. How much extra CO2 can we continue releasing into the atmosphere and ocean before it dooms future generations to extinction instead of poverty?
Humanity can recover from poverty. Extinction, not so much. What's the date at which your ROI on not abating human pollution drops to a null value?
Re:Look over here, look over here! (Score:2, Interesting)
His ice cream melts too quickly. Just flip a coin and call it good or bad already.
Anyone believing in global warming is going to stick with seeing it as bad.
Anyone not believing in the warming is going to see change as good.
Anyone else not picking a team, wins, realizing that the planet has been in constant flux. There will be worse things happen, there will be better things happen. Some may be in your lifetime, most won't. Adapt or die and STFU about whining that the world will change and whose fault it is. It just merely is. So do something proactive besides bait me into bitchslapping you over your precious, politically correct OPINION.
So, you wanted to buy coastal property and live on the beach. Well, that just isn't a very good idea now, is it? Your major malfunction is dwelling on what you wish instead of what is.
Now get off my lawn!