Swedish Farmers Have Doubts About Climatologists and Climate Change 567
cold fjord (826450) writes with this excerpt from ScienceNordic: Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing ... But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists. The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund ... was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change. Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicals ATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem. But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues. Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course: "They explained that they didn't quite believe in climate changes," she says. "Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities."
(Original paper here.)
Weather is NOT climate (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeat that after me, Mr. Fjord.
It is expected that there will be areas of happy, mild weather in any scenario you care to imagine. It is to be expected that a bunch of locals in regions suffering from happy, mild weather might not be as concerned about the issue as someone who had their house wiped out by a tornado.
But it the concerns and insights of either set of persons would be irrelevant to the discussion of GLOBAL climate change (hint, the word that is BOLDED is important).
Climate in not weather. Weather is not climate.
Re:Weather is NOT climate (Score:5, Funny)
Meh, I live in Canada, future home of 250,000 km of tropical coastline.
What's your retirement plan? I've invested all my RRSPs (like a 401k) into scuba gear and sunblock.
Dive Nanasvik!
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But apparently you assholes don't care about what you are going to eat while your permafrost thaws.
Don't worry, they will just slash and burn the [remaining] forests to provide arable land. What could possibly go wrong?
Re: Weather is NOT climate (Score:2)
Re:Weather is NOT climate (Score:5, Informative)
But apparently you assholes don't care about what you are going to eat while your permafrost thaws.
Oh, they needn't worry about that. When the permafrost thaws, all the sequestered CO2 and methane frozen in the ice and soil is going to release in giant poisonous bubbles and asphyxiate them all. You don't need to eat when aren't even breathing.
(I can't find a link to the article I read that melting permafrost could release its CO2 explosively, poisoning large areas, but here's a link [scientificamerican.com] about how much gas is stuck in the ground up north. So even if you don't accept the theory that melting permafrost could result in asphyxiation, it is still something we'd want to avoid)
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climate
noun: climate; plural noun: climates
the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period.
So, climate *is* weather.
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You can look up weather by different time periods. By the hour, the day, so why not the week, the month, the year, or even the century? As per the definition, there is no time period where weather ceases to be weather. Therefore climate is just weather over a longer period then we normally use, but that doesn't mean it is no longer weather.
Which is why climate is weather but weather isn't (always) climate.
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As per the definition, there is no time period where weather ceases to be weather.
I'm afraid that's the continuum fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
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"Repeat that after me, Mr. Fjord."
You're talking to a Norwegian, the Swede is over there, the one with the H&M Jacket, on the IKEA stool, drinking Absolut Vodka, listening to ABBA, all dead giveaways.
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Thing is, we are very sheltered from global effects, because none of the major symptoms of global warming are visible in Fennoscandian region due to persistent environmental factors, such as rising land that is rising much faster than sea levels, or the fact that Gulf Stream effectively amortises us from most of the extreme weather effects.
The main things that they see are things like price fluctuations, many of which are in fact beneficial to farmers who produce the good that is going to be increasingly sc
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That's funny, because every time there's some freak weather (or even normal weather that's mildly unpleasant) I could easily post 10+ articles from major public media sources that assert "this is an effect/indicator of climate change".
Strangely, I don't see all the 'weather isn't climate' folks posting then....
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The number one rule of science is "Question Everything(*)"
(*)except Global Warming.
Re:Weather is NOT climate (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Weather is NOT climate (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the temperature over the last millionish years...
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/... [ucr.edu]
you can see it's been this hot many times before without human intervention.
you can see the temperature made a major move upwards a looooong time before the 1800's. from 26c to 29c. Humans almost certainly had nothing to do with that or other massive temperature shifts between 26 and 30c that have occurred repeatedly over the last millionish years.
This particular move may be enhanced by humans. 7 billion human beings are having widespread effects on the planet. And it looks like we may be on target for 11 billion humans instead of 9 billion humans.
That's a lot of Co2, methane from cows, asphalt paved and building covered ground that used to be forest in most places.
But we are not even at a record temperature yet, similar temperature moves have happened many times (dozens, scores?) over the last million years without humans being the cause.
Based on the evidence of the historical record the temperature could fall 3 degrees shortly after it peaks. Well after we are dead of course.
Right now, I think the most likely course is temperatures will continue to rise slowly- we'll see the oceans rise by 20" by 2100.
And we'll have *too many* people. Way over the carrying capacity of the earth. We've overbred and it really doesn't matter what we do if we don't get the population down. We are just moving deck chairs on a sinking Titantic.
Here's the last 10 million years
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6ftZ... [blogspot.com]
It shows a pretty strong correlation between co2 and temperature. It also shows the co2 level has fluctuated a lot without humans around and that the temperature has been as high and lower many times in the last 10 million years.
Here's the last 65 million years
http://mpe.dimacs.rutgers.edu/... [rutgers.edu]
We are at the bottom of a 65 million year long cooling period.
Here's the last 2.4 billion years
http://geology.utah.gov/survey... [utah.gov]
We could just be exiting a near ice age. It looks like much of the time, the average temperature of the earth has been about 72F. About 10 degrees warmer than it is now. Humans could be the cause- but even without human interaction, the temperature seems likely to return to the mean at some point in the future. On a billion year scale, the current temperatures are uncommonly low.
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I wouldn't sweat it too much. Given the insanity of world governments (and their citizens) and the continued proliferation of nuclear arms I forsee an intense cooling period coming. A nuclear winter preceded by a drastic population reduction. That should solve the problem of global warming nicely. So quit worrying so much.
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"ice at both poles has been melting"
This has happened before. The northern pass used to be open.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
We're coming out of a cool period. It's a cycle. I would rather have warming than cooling. Cooling is deadly. Warming is merely an inconvenience, for you.
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Ah, a typography Nazi.
Slashdot never fails to impress.
Who CARES what non-science approaches "think"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anecdotally, I don't believe the Earth revolves around the sun and YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.
That doesn't mean it's not the case, that I'm qualified to research or understand the model or that my opinion holds ANY weight whatsoever.
What it means is that on some topics, the "majority opinion" doesn't really have much bearing on the facts of the matter - and thus "Democratic" approaches to dealing with problems that are important but beyond the scope/scale of one person or group's anecdotal experiences probably won't be successful without education.
Should we listen to what they have to say? Absolutely. With that grain of salt handy, absolutely. They aren't 99% of the world's climatologists.
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I think the point of the article isn't that this means anything about climate change, rather that these are people likely to be more heavily affected by climate change than anyone else - they are the ones that should be taking an interest and being involved, and the exact opposite appears to be happening, they are denying it.
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Re:Who CARES what non-science approaches "think"? (Score:4, Insightful)
While in general I agree with you - you are talking about a group of people here who do their life's work at the junction of the earth and the air. It is true they may be misguided or misinformed. But their opinions were not arrived at through talk radio.
No, they formed them through the internet, like everyone else these days. Where do you think these people live, anyway?
Re:Who CARES what non-science approaches "think"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The chances are that they arrived at them through the time-honored "head in bushes" -method: Something will cause me great harm if true. I don't really have any real power over it, nor any way to significantly mitigate the damage through preparation. Therefore, I'll disbelief it to protect myself from stress and worry.
If true, such feeling of disempowerment is a bigger problem to Sweden than climate change. The latter is ultimately a matter of enduring hardship and adapting, which is something the Nordics are quite familiar with; but the former is a spiritual malaise that ultimately leads to dysfunctional society and democracy de facto falling and degenerating to corporacy, as has happened in the US.
That proves it (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think the tin foil is finally getting to you. You're supposed to swath your body in it, not eat it.
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And to a long, detailed, thought out post we have here the typical follower's knee-jerk response.
This is one of many reasons people are not believing the claims.
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And to a long, detailed, thought out post we have here the typical follower's knee-jerk response.
This is one of many reasons people are not believing the claims.
The problem is that the deniers keep trotting out the *same* nonsense and outright lies, and at some point we have to say, enough. Saying that people don't believe the science because the scientists don't take every crazy rant seriously and debunk the lies endlessly is to participate in the strategy to keep us from taking action before it's too late.
If you really believe what you said, here's how you can help - post a link about that claim he made that Escondido changed the traffic light patterns to incre
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WHEN WILL THE SHEEPLE FINALLY REALISE THE LIZARDS ARE THE REAL MASTERS.
Man the crackpot denialist invasion of slashdot is getting tiring. What happened to the website that actually shouted down cranky god damn denialists, creationists and other conspiratoria
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Not sure which you are talking about. The ones denying the scam or the ones denying the truth.
Sweden has been luck (Score:3)
The US Northwest and Mid-Atlantic, A region around the Urals and China have been fortunate thus far as well.
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The US Northwest and Mid-Atlantic, A region around the Urals and China have been fortunate thus far as well.
I've been to Scandinavia and it's COLD there. TBH if I lived there I'd want all the warming I could get.
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It's all a Viking plot (Score:2)
What The Hell (Score:2)
So I went into the thesis.
There is NOTHING quantitative here. Department of Thematic Studies? WTF?
As far as I can tell this is a conclusion based on building castles in the air.
Uninformed researcher (Score:3)
The key is the last item in the article:
“This is a resistance to decrees which they think undermine competitive Swedish agricultural production,”
The researcher has probably never spent time on a farm. She apparently had a stereotype of farmers as victims of big industry helplessly struggling to live in harmony with nature in the face of changing climate. In real life farmers are industry - the agricultural industry. They work very hard to maintain a farm, a farm being something radically out of balance with nature. Unless the laws and 'free' 'trade' agreements change to alter their economic incentives, their focus will be on their immediate, short-term economic situation and whatever mythology is tied up with their understanding of those economics.
The telling part is "Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities." If the climate is changing, then the question of the cause is the first part of finding a solution, but the problem does not magically become less serious depending on who or what the cause is. Someone who goes off-topic about human activities is trying - poorly - to rationalize their denial.
Farmers also not sure of the whole sun centered so (Score:3, Insightful)
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And as we know, farmers are on the cutting edge of science.
Many are, actually, because agricultural science is one area where the government both funds it very well (at least in the US) and there's a lot of work put into practical applications. (Some) farmers are using RTK GPS for tending their fields, robots equipped with vision processing to pick fruit (a piece of fruit's IR reflectivity is an excellent way to judge ripeness) and so on.
I know someone who owns a milk farm. He jokes he's got a "degree
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Reverse that logic (Score:2)
I've never eaten any food from Sweden, other than a few candy fish. Is it logical for me to doubt the existence of Swedish agriculture based on it not affecting me (as far as I know)?
Maybe Swedes would *prefer* it a bit hotter indeed (Score:2)
A couple of years ago I talked with a swedish meteorologist that explained me it's quite difficult to shame people in his country about their impact on global warming, because definitely when you spend a very large part of the year with few sunny hours and one meter of snow at your door stop, "a bit warmer" definitely doesn't sound this bad.
I expect this applies to Swedish farmers as well...
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Sweden and some other northerly countries are probably situated in much better locations to observe minor climatic variations. A bit hotter probably doesn't mean much in the Midwest of the USA, where they already have long growing seasons. It means a lot where a few degrees can make the difference between sucess and failure of a crop and an entire society. And having such a sensitive indicator makes them better judges of past climate patterns.
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Well, if the Gulf Stream [wikipedia.org] ceases to exist due to the changes (which has been considered a couple of times), the Swedes won't be all that glad I guess. Siberia will look like a warm and cozy place in comparison. Rome will be a bit colder than New York.
Many(?) Swedes vs. Millions of S.E. Asians (Score:4, Insightful)
So while I'm not ready to completely discount the stories of some Swedish "focus groups" (from the article), that anecdotal evidence would be balanced (overwhelmed? flooded? washed away? submerged?) by the experiences of tens of millions of rice farmers here in S.E. Asia (Mekong delta) who are literally seeing their future disappear before their eyes.
I think the rate of inundation by the ocean here (I live in Vietnam) is getting ridiculous, I frequently read in the local papers about KILOMETERS per year of rice paddies being lost to the sea; if not by direct submergence then by saltwater infiltration. I don't think there's a shadow of a doubt to these farmers that SOMETHING very bad is happening, though honestly I'm not sure if many of them have even heard of climate change.
Now of course there are a lot of other things going on that could be contributing to this. Overuse of groundwater, damming of the Mekong, improper irrigation; I'm not a climate scientist and I haven't screened out those effects (of course climate scientists who've looked at this closely have and they say the effect is real). But neither are those Swedes climate scientists so if their unprofessional opinion is that nothing out of the ordinary is going on, well I've got ten times (a hundred times? a thousand times?) more opinions here to counter that. Then again, there just might be some biases in listening more to white europeans as opposed to brown asians so maybe their opinions don't count. (I rarely if ever see any articles in Western media about the tremendous loss to agriculture that these farmers in the Mekong are facing; the rice basket to HUNDREDS of millions of people; nor do I see articles about the gloomy forecasts made by the governments here that in 20 years or so millions of people in cities like mine, saigon, will be flooded out).
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Now of course there are a lot of other things going on that could be contributing to this. Overuse of groundwater, damming of the Mekong, improper irrigation;
All possible. And you need an answer in a timely manner. And if its going to be expensive to implement, you are going to need some level of certainy before your country invests millions in schemes to correct the wrong problem.
I'm not a climate scientist and I haven't screened out those effects
But if you were a climate scientist, everything would look like AGW. And if you were a hydrologist, everything would look like ground water mismanagement. It seems that every special interest requires its own scientific discipline in order to secure the most funding possible. Wouldn't
Well, now that's simple: (Score:3)
If we get rid of all the farmers, not only will we have unity of ideas, but everyone will starve so we've solved anthropogenic global warming.
Of course, even at this point it may well take a long time for the existing effects to reverse, but we can rest easy in our graves. ;)
(Extreme tongue in cheek warning for the humorless bastards on both sides of this flamepit topic who'd take anything seriously no master how ridiculous.)
Cause for celebration!? (Score:3)
I guess we Americans aren't the only stupid people in the world!
Nothing new here. (Score:3)
Not a damn thing will be done. (Score:2)
Climate change is happening and nothing is going to stop it. The thing is, nobody is willing to make sacrifices to stop human-made climate change. Essentially we will have to cease being such zealous consumers of resources. That 's never going happen generally because very few people are willing to:
Give up your cars, including hybrids and electricals. Those may be low or zero-emission vehicles, but the factory where they were build isn't.
Cancel your annual flight down south each winter.
Give up your 300W
Re:People living in the polar regions (Score:5, Funny)
"...don't believe in Global Warming"
A little polar bear goes up to his mum and asks her, “Am I real polar bear?”
“Of course you are” his mum replies. “I’m a polar bear, your dad’s a polar bear, so you’re a polar bear”.
“But are you sure I don’t have any brown bear or grizzly bear in me?” he asks.
“Listen, if you don’t believe me go ask your grand-dad”
So he goes and asks his grand-dad
“Grand-dad, are you sure I’m a polar bear. I don’t have brown bear or grizzly bear in me?”
His grand–dad looks down on him and smiles.
“Listen, my boy, I’m a polar bear, my mum and dad were polar bears, and your granny, she was a polar bear, so your dad is a polar bear and so is your mum and her mum and her dad and her grand parents. We’re all polar bears so you are a pure, 100% polar bear”
The little polar bear doesn’t look convinced so his grand-dad asks him’
“What’s worrying you?”
“Well” he replies, “If both mum and dad are polar bears and all my grannies and grand-dads are polar bears, and even their mums and dads were all polar bears, and there’s no trace of grizzly or brown bear in methen why am I so fucking cold?”
Re:People living in the polar regions (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people.
My friend from Norway is paranoid about Global Warming slowing the gulf stream and leading to a localised ice age.
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It's Norway, how would they even know a "localized ice age" kicked in?!?
Re:People living in the polar regions (Score:5, Funny)
You go on a viking to a place that you used to raid for wine, and find out that they don't have any because grapes don't grow there anymore?
There's something rotten in Denmark too (Score:2, Informative)
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Oh noes, the evil Koch's. Apparently linking to a Soros linked group for "objectivity" is a-okay though.
Re: People living in the polar regions (Score:4, Interesting)
Having actually been there and visited a few of the glaciers, some of them have signposts that say how far they've receded. There's posts along the path with years on them. Thing is the posts go clear back to the late 1800's. Heading back in a couple weeks, I'll take pictures this time.
Re: People living in the polar regions (Score:4, Informative)
I would be amazed if any sign there were older than 1897. However, yes, you are correct that that is when the warming trend started -- somewhat earlier than the rest of the globe. You're implying that this stands in opposition to AGW. Let's review:
The foundation of AGW is based on the physical properties of CO2, specifically its absorption spectrum. This is measurable both under laboratory conditions and via satellite. Theoretically you could measure it yourself. Sunlight shines on Earth, and Earth re-radiates this same energy at a lower wavelength. This is described by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. You can trivially calculate that, based on the incident solar irradiation and Earth's albedo, the planet should be about -18 degrees C. The effect of the atmosphere is to slow radiation leaving the Earth (the atmosphere is mostly transparent to incoming solar radiation). Outgoing radiation is absorbed and re-emitted often before it reaches space.
The lower atmosphere is already pretty much opaque to outgoing radiation; increased CO2 does not block more radiation than would otherwise be blocked. There was a point where it was theorized that no warming could occur because of this. However, it was determined that the effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2 was to extend the CO2-rich region further into space. That this increases the heat energy on the planet's surface should be obvious. The direct effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere is extremely easy to calculate, again using Stefan-Boltzmann, and it comes out to 3.7 W/m^2, which is usually considered to be equivalent to 1 degree C.
Unless you can find a new way to radiate energy to space, or unless everything we know about radiation is wrong, then the Earth must experience at least that degree of warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Anything further than that is a matter for study and scientific debate, and of course the effects in different places. However, given that warming must be happening, the ability of scientists to say whether specific incidents are or are not related is more plausible.
I am glad you visited Alaska. I lived there for about 25 years, in the middle of the Chugach Mountains. There was some degree of glaciation on all of the surrounding peaks. Being in an isolated town meant that going anywhere else meant traveling across a great deal of the land. The glaciers have been melting my entire life, but the warming accelerated in the late 1990s; retreat measured in meters or tens of meters per year is very noticeable. This is very easily explained as an effect of AGW. Some other plausible explanation would be quite welcome; anything that would give me the hope of some day having the Alaska of my memory back. Unfortunately there is a great deal of science that speaks against the possibility.
Re: People living in the polar regions (Score:3, Insightful)
So are you suggesting they should publish their methods and data? Good thing that's part of the scientific process. Pick a reference: http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden... [nasa.gov]
People often deny fact and logic based on nothing more than conviction. If that doesn't make them stupid, it makes them something much worse.
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The problem is not their method or whether they publish it. I believe their methods are quite sound.
The real problem is two-fold: First, weather is an extremely complex process. I doubt that we understand enough of it to reliably predict what's going to happen if one or more factors change.
Second, as was said before, the data they have to work with is very young. And what they use to 'create' older data might or might not be very accurate.
I don't quite believe that we are able to say without a doubt whether
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Your brain is small. Really small. Being outdoors probably isn't going to help you understand climate patterns any more than watching Fox News will help you understand politics.
We have measured the increase in the percentages of several gasses in our atmosphere, big or small, it has changed - denialists like you need a hole in the head.
You have no idea how "minor" or major the effects of human industry are, because you're too stupid/feckless even to honestly look. Go die of thirst already.
Re:The Earth is big. Really big. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Farmers also spend a lot of time outdoors, unlike researchers, and have a better idea of how minor human effects are."
They also shat in their fields for millenia giving all the population worms and other parasites before science told them to stop.
That was a 'human effect' too.
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... and fucked farm animals for entertainment thus spreading gloriously nasty bugs around the human race.
Now now, I think it's probably safe to say that some of them only made out.
I mean, seriously, you've seen people with their pets, right? DEE-scusting.
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"There's alot of ppl. who don't believe in climate change (or its cause). I doubt Swedish farmers are the only group so I wonder why they are newsworthy while the groups are not?"
It's because when they were still called Vikings, they followed a guy named Eric the Red, a famous Global Warming believer, to Greenland where they perished almost all.
Now they are cautious.
Re:"Surprising"??? (Score:5, Funny)
"We're gonna need a bigger re-education camp"
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Because they're not in the US? Just supposed to be US right wing doubting climate change.
Re:"Surprising"??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Swedish farmers, like most people of Fennoscandia do indeed see less effect from global warming that vast majority of planet's population.
First of all, our ground is rising several times faster than global warming is rising sea levels. This is because of depression caused by recent ice age, and after ice mass retreated, the ground started to rise to the state in which it was before vast amounts of ice were sitting on top of it. This is an ongoing process that completely eliminates the problems from rising sea levels around here.
Then there's the fact that our winters are more dependent on Gulf Stream than on any other global trend, and Stream is still going strong enough to keep us warm. That amortises the effect of global warming to a significant degree.
Re:"Surprising"??? (Score:5, Informative)
You know, Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are really a lot like the US. It looks really liberal if you're in the big cities but it starts to get distinctly redneck if you head out of town. The farmers there are like the farmers in the US, a conservative bent that things should stay they way they always were and that the distant remote government really doesn't understand them (same with loggers, another big industry in Scandinavia). Doesn't help that Scandinavian TV likes to portray rural people as ignorant hicks (same as US TV actually!).
So I can really understand that Swedish academics get confused if they spend their lives in the middle of Stockholm and think that the rest of the country is equally liberal. Then all these European countries feign shock and surprise when suddenly there's a surge at the elections for center and right-of-center parties. The real difference in US is that there a broader balance of political power between the urban, suburban, and rural areas.
But then again, I'm in California, and I'm always surprised by how many people assume CA is solidly liberal through and through, when we're more like a 55/45 split (all those red/blue states look purple if you look at it county by county).
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Someone who can see more than one paticular area and who keeps particular records of temperatures and weather patterns?
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Definitely not the one who thinks that farmers dealing with weather means the same farmers are dealing with climate
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ivory tower
I've got a working hypothesis that anyone who uses the term "ivory tower" generally has a massive chip on his shoulder and very little idea what he's talking about. I have yet to see a counterexample.
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You can see through
Your rose coloured glasses
In a world that seems
Like glamour to you
You've got opinions and judgments about
All kind of things
That you don't know anything about
Ivory Tower, Van Morrison
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This is just like Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever we fight the next war to line Halliburton's pockets. If you want to know the historical and political factors driving the different factions in the war, are you going to ask a scholar who has researched the history and analyzes news from all sources? No, just ask one of the grunts from some FOB - they know the straight shit.
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"Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing" if this was true, there would be no climate deniers, we would all agree"
If you were a RESEARCHER, that is.
Re:funny (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens if we clean up the environment and it not the cause of global warming. All we'd have then is no smog, non-polluting power and clean water.
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What happens if we clean up the environment and it not the cause of global warming. All we'd have then is no smog, non-polluting power and clean water.
This kind of post shows ignorance about reality. CO2 is not smog, stopping AGW is orthogonal to cleaning the water (and could make the water messier, considering all the mining that must be done for lithium batteries etc).
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Sure, by just going back to an agrarian society.
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There's plenty of people who believe that germs don't cause disease, that the Earth is the center of the universe, that Einstein was wrong, that the Holocaust didn't happen.... so does their denial indicate they have a point, or that there's always a few idiots who believe nonsense?
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Then there is the Aether theory. You think scientists are somehow magically infallible or something like that?
Not trying to go a little off topic, but
I actually think the whole concept of Aether being the medium to transmit light "waves" is a good example of science working the way it should. Individuals observed that all waves appear to need a medium to travel in. Therefore, there must be a medium for light waves.
Now, the difference between blind faith and science is that someone wanted to show that the Aether theory was correct. This was the famous Michelson-Morley experiment [wikipedia.org] where the theory was shown to be
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Oh really? So how many of the predictions our esteemed climate scientists made with their precious models actually held?
I would rather side with the farmers.
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I don't believe the two concepts are mutually exclusive, for a few reasons. First, "Random" is a subjective term, in the sense that a particular person considers something "random" if he can't spot a pattern. Secondly, most Christians I know consider it perfectly consistent with their worldview to believe that evolu
Re:funny (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think an intelligent agent is causing changes to DNA, that is absolutely at odds with thinking the changes are random mutations. When I hear people say that some Christians believe that evolution is how God achieves his goals, I always thought that meant that an intelligent designer set the process in motion and went away and let nature run its course. Are you saying that people who say this believe that an intelligent agent is actively changing DNA? If so, how many changes are due to the agent and how many are natural? And how do you tell?
People who disagree because of their worldview are typically at odds with vast amount of evidence that falsifies their beliefs. From the disagreements I've seen, it generally a two-sided issue with evidence firmly coming down on one side, and the other side unwilling to change their beliefs to fit the evidence. In the case of evolution and AGW, the evidence comes down firmly on the side of natural process without intelligence for evolution, and human-produced greenhouse gases causing warming for AGW.
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Secondly, most Christians I know consider it perfectly consistent with their worldview to believe that evolution is a mechanism by which God achieves His goals.
Yes. I think he was smart enough to realize it is a lot easier and kewler to do creation using procedural generation with DNA evolution than having to hand carve every model by hand.
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How many biologists understand the nature of randomness though? When it comes to metaphysical stuff, the biologists are punting the difficult bit into the term 'random' and ascribing this 'random' thingamajig the properties that fundies ascribe to their God. Then things such as mind, consciousness and intelligence have yet to be turned into sufficiently concretely defined concepts to answer questions like 'is evolution directed in an intelligent way' let alone how and if human intelligence and consciousnes
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Re:Swedish farmers are wise (Score:5, Insightful)
... IPCC has been furiously back pedaling...
Furiously back pedaling? - or - Careful restatement of certain specific points based upon new information, while keeping the overall context intact?
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I've seen so much over the top hype and hysteria from the climate change deniers, that I no longer believe their 10 word or less summaries of why climate change is not happening.
The climate change deniers need to start presenting a better level of peer-reviewed data and conclusions, and stop their unproven assertions (note: hypothetical research papers funded by the oil and coal industries, however well that funding is hidden, do not count.)
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[citation needed]
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Anthropocentric global warming is being forced down our throats. But not in the way you meant.
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Uhhhh, so if a region's climate changes from wet to semiarid, the local weather is not going to change?