US Senate Set To Vote On Whether Climate Change Is a Hoax 667
sciencehabit writes The U.S. Senate's simmering debate over climate science has come to a full boil today, as lawmakers prepare to vote on measures offered by Democrats that affirm that climate change is real—with one also noting that global warming is not "a hoax." In an effort to highlight their differences with some Republicans on climate policy, several Democrats have filed largely symbolic amendments to a bill that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline. They are designed to put senators on the record on whether climate change is real and human-caused.
Yep it is a scam (Score:2, Funny)
It is just there to steal money.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress may be out to do that...
I tend to be a strong skeptic on the subject, but that said, Congress has no business declaring jack shit when it comes to anything scientific. They are more than free to debate, create, and modify *laws* based on it, but they have zero authority to declare anything a hoax.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Funny thing is that the summary directly contradicts the title. The democrats are attaching riders to the Keystone XL bill that declare climate change caused by man a fact. This is just as bad, but done by the other side of the aisle.
Re: Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of the Indiana Pi Bill. It's not even that the Indiana Rep. felt strongly that Pi equals 3.2, but he was unqualified to understand the subject, but had no problem passing a law based on 'expert' testimony.
Classic Dunning-Kruger all over town.
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attaching riders to the Keystone XL bill that declare climate change caused by man a fact.
Isn't that effectively the same thing as the title? I saw no implication about which side was initiating the vote.
Its all politics of course, but makes about as much sense as Indiana legislating the value of pi in 1897. (Fortunately, their senate struck it down.)
They want to identify the climate change deniers, but that seems like an abuse of the legislative process.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they have complete authority to declare things hoaxes, even if they aren't. This is what we get with democracy (or at least, a democratic republic): people who are actual experts in their fields are overruled by yahoos who were popularly elected by the People. It doesn't matter what's true or not, all that matters is what the People think and want, and they vote for it, based on promises made by political candidates running for office.
If the politicians campaign that they will pass a law that forces the circumference of a circle to be exactly 3 times its diameter, and the People vote for it, that's what we get: a law that directly contradicts mathematical reality. If they promise to pass a law which sets the speed of light to be infinity and the People vote for it, that's what we get: a law that directly contradicts observed fact.
You may think Congress has no business declaring jack shit when it comes to anything scientific, but you've been overruled by your countrymen at the polls, who think it does.
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They actually have all the authority they want to declare it a hoax or not. The question is, what effect does that declaration have?
Congress as the legislative branch cannot make unconstitutional laws, but as long as they are not unconstitutional, they can create any law they want. And they can enforce it to the extent that they can get the Executive branch to do so. Which is usually where the silliness stops, unless the Executive branch is in collusion on the ridiculousness.
The legislative branches of s
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. But sadly they don't vote on whether senate is a scam.
Scientific question (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of specifics of the actual objective results, anthropogenic climate change is a scientific question -- whether certain consequences of our actions are leading to a fairly specific set of changes to climate.
That politicians want to vote on it strikes me as a significant indicator as to their incompetence. As if we needed any more...
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they're not really voting on whether global warming is real or not.
it's just simply some poison pill amendments attached to the KeystoneXL bill. So that if the GOP really wants to pass that bill, they will also be passing riders that state "GW is real".
It's silly, its petty, but I find it amusing in this case.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Informative)
But with global warming you don't necessarily get warmer weather. That's because "warming" is a misnomer. What's actually going on is the total amount of kinetic energy in the atmosphere is going up. That means **on average** the globe is warmer, true, but nobody actually experiences the global average. They experience the **instantaneous local temperature**.
With a more energetic atmosphere, air masses move around more and differently. That means a lot of places will get stretches of unusually warm AND unusually cold weather. And some places will get wetter, and others drier. The hallmark of climate, as you are most likely to experience it personally, is what would be anomalous weather a few decades ago.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Malaria is not a warm weather dependent disease. England in the 16th Century had malarial marshes (in the middle of the Little Ice Age) and the largest malarial outbreak of the 20th Century occurred in Arctic circle Russia.
The real vector of malaria is poor sanitation, which in turn is a function of poverty and lack of economic development.
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Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Informative)
Where does this bullshit originate? I guess the same place as the "global warming is a fraud" bullshit.
While DDT was banned for agricultural use, it was never banned for malaria control. One of the problems with DDT and most pesticides including antibiotics is that overuse gives the pests a chance to develop pesticide resistance, this is what finally killed DDT usage, it was so overused that mosquitoes became resistant. Currently it is being used by at least 12 countries (India and some S African countries as of 2008) for malaria control and the WHO is encouraging the use of it, though not overuse. http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
Where ever you are getting your propaganda from you should stop using as they are spreading outright lies and if they can lie about something as easy to check as the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Pesticides how are they lying about harder to check things such as climate change?
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Person who worked in mosquito control here. (Score:5, Informative)
I spent many years working with vector borne disease control, so I actually know something about this. Let me suggest a slightly different way of thinking about DDT.
The problem isn't DDT per se, but how, where and when it is applied.
In WW2 draftees were dusted with DDT powder to kill body lice, and so far as we know no adverse health results resulted -- probably because there were none. That's because this *application* is benign. Likewise spraying house interiors with DDT is a cost effective, safe, and environmentally benign.
Indiscriminate fogging with DDT on the other hand is neither environmentally benign, nor in the long term effective. DDT is (potentially) great stuff, and therein lies the problem. It promises (to a certain kind of mentality) to take the brain-work out of deciding when and where to spray. It's tempting to roll the trucks with ULV sprayers and spray anywhere and anytime, and it will often produce dramatic effects in the short term for not much money. In the long term it produces a host of environmental problems, and pesticide resistance -- particularly if it enters aquatic habitat. For one thing, it is toxic to invertebrates. **That's why we use the stuff**. The problem is that it is non-specific, and it (and its toxic by-products) remain in the environment for years or decades. Modern alternatives break down rapidly into non-toxic byproducts. In fact DDT's persistence is what makes it highly desirable for in-house spraying. One spraying can last for a year or more. That's good when you want to kill everything, for a long time; but that's not what you want to do when you're applying outside. Many invertebrates are beneficial, or even indispensable.
It's notable that in the article you link only quotes papers from the '69 to '72 era when it comes to the ecological impacts of DDT. This smacks of cherry-picking. When an idea like eggshell thinning enters the scientific discourse, it is normal for evidence for and against the idea to be found in the literature. This means it is *always* possible to find early literature citations which appear to refute the current scientific consensus. A quick google scholar search for articles on eggshell thinning and DDT from 1975 on shows overwhelming evidence in support of the hypothesis. For example it reveals the reason that the early feeding studies cited failed to find eggshell thinning: in many species it is not DDT, but DDE (a by product of the environmental breakdown of DDT) that is the culprit.
That DDT per se is not particularly toxic to humans is no news to anyone. I was actually briefly part of a team that looked at ways of tracking DDT usage so that it could be used in house spraying in Africa. The problem is that in desperately poor countries stuff gets stolen, and the danger is that material intended for safe and environmentally benign domestic spraying would be diverted to agricultural use which while not particularly threatening to human health would have disastrous impact on environmental health and the economic activities that depend on that.
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For the sake of this discussion, mosquito borne malaria is a warm weather problem. Increased deaths from cold weather, which was the parent's straw man, occur when it's really cold (sub freezing). Mosquitos die when it freezes. Sure, they can be a problem even when it's cold, but not when it's deadly cold.
-Chris
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Funny)
Free oil for everyone's rivers!
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly what benefits do we get from the pipeline? If you think we are going to actually get longterm jobs out of it you are naive.
Importantly, as Raddatz said, these jobs would only be supported during the construction phase, which is expected to take one to two years. After construction, the pipeline would employ about 50 people, primarily for maintenance.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/nov/16/russ-girling/transcanada-ceo-says-42000-keystone-xl-pipeline-jo/
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We get two things:
1. Use of petroleum at a faster rate (economic gain in the short term, but more global warming and faster depletion of strategic reserves in the long term)
2. Probably a net reduction in oil spills, because not having the pipeline would only force the oil to be transported on trains, not stop it.
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2. depends on how competently the pipeline is operated. And the likely answer to that is "not very".
Transcanada does not exactly have a stellar record. Their Keystone phase 1 pipeline sprung 14 leaks in its first two years of operation. Across their network, they average better than 70 spills per year [thestar.com].
And their Bison natural gas pipeline blew the fuck up after just 6 months of operation [www.cbc.ca].
I wouldn't trust these guys to operate a garden hose, much less a pipeline carrying dibit over a major aquifer.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Interesting)
Obama will veto the bill anyway, so its all a wash anyway... except for the grandstanding.
The Republicans know Obama will veto it, but they want him to have to do it. And the Democrats know the Republicans will pass the bill, so they just want to force them to go on record to state something to get a dig in on them as well. Net result? No Keystone XL pipeline. Effort required for negative result? Years.
They need to do away with the rules that allow off-topic amendments. Congress takes too long to act as it is without it adding bullshit amendments to every bill to make a point, or worse, to add riders that completely subvert the bill or even add completely unrelated stuff.
It's tough enough to get transparency on things in DC without them adding amendments simply so that you look bad for voting for something that neither you nor your constituents want just to get a more important change through.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
> Obama will veto the bill anyway, so its all a wash anyway... except for the grandstanding.
Except (and this may be a minor point) we'd have a clear record of who voted for it and who voted against it, which might have an effect on the next election cycle.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, it's going to galvanize the Republican voters even more, and we're going to have even more Republicans elected in 2016.
Who really thinks that Republican voters are smart enough to know that climate change isn't a hoax?
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Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Funny)
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I like how everyone assumes not only that a supreme being exists, but also that it has a penis.
By that logic, you think ships have a vagina?
Then again, God was made by man in his own image.
Re:Yep it is a scam (Score:5, Funny)
I like how everyone assumes not only that a supreme being exists, but also that it has a penis.
Of course god has a penis. Read the old testament. Only something with a penis could be deliberately that childish, evil, and destructive and not only expect people to be happy about it, but also people to worship the ground he walks on.
More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
More proof that this debate is political and not scientific.
Passing a law that says it is real is like voting on the sex of a chicken. No matter the outcome of the vote, only testing can provide the answer.
How about we get politics out of science and rely on the scientific method to determine if "Global Warming" is real or not.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
The need for separation of science and state becomes more and more obvious every year since 1947.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More proof (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not an expert on arithmetic, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More proof (Score:5, Informative)
That's a Last Week with John Oliver quote.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually curios ho you pan to get 5 to be bigger than 15 (without simply redefining symbols which would be cheating)
I'm sorry, as you can see on this paper I've just produced, I clearly drew the number five larger. You really should have waited for me to show you the data before you jumped the gun with your answer.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually curios ho you pan to get 5 to be bigger than 15 (without simply redefining symbols which would be cheating)
I'm sorry, as you can see on this paper I've just produced, I clearly drew the number five larger. You really should have waited for me to show you the data before you jumped the gun with your answer.
So basically, the only way you can prove your point is to ignore all the facts and question completely out of context.
That's exactly how deniers work, well played sir, well played.
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Font size.
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Well, this is Brazil, where any vegetable is soaked with
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
The need for separation of science and state becomes more and more obvious every year since 1947.
NO. There already is too much separation of science and state, as evidenced by this very issue. There needs to be less separation of science and state, but we need to make sure that it's science defining policy, and not policy defining science. Try reading that again but replacing the word "science" with the word "reality" and you'll see what I mean.
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That's nonsense. Science operates outside of policy, whereas policy takes into account science, politics, economy, "state of the union" and so on.
For science to define policy would mean that politics, economy, "state of the union" and so on would be input to science and output would be policy. That doesn't make sense because that is not what science is concerned about, nor can measure, or has credible theories about it. (I do not count economy, political science etc. as sciences.)
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There's this story about Canut and the tide that the US Senate might want to ponder.
Reality owes no debt to anyone's political ideology.
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Tell that to Indiana. They tried to legislate that pi was 3.2 [wikipedia.org]
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That said, you're right. It's not a question anymore. It's a scientific answer at this point.
Funny you should mention that (Score:4, Insightful)
The article linked says the bill implied Pi should be 3.2...
So you really want to bring that up in the context of a bill that claims humans cause substantial warming? Or that the warming we see is anything to be concerned about?
Observable reality is what it is, no matter how much a law rounds or chastises.
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This is a really old and mostly wrong story. There was a person who wanted to be paid for his invention, which happened to be a wrong-headed attempt to square the circle. He wanted government money for having done that work. That is what the bill was for. To give him money. He didn't get the money.
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The reason for the amendment is not to convince anyone. It's to put people on record about the subject so it can be used in the future as ammunition against them.
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It's depressing and (I wish) shocking how many people here who try to pass themselves off as informed don't immediately realize this.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More proof (Score:5, Informative)
Voting whether something is fact is indeed stupid.
Now if it were a vote on whether to implement a policy based on the assumption that climate change is real, or a vote whether to direct courts to make future rulings based on the assumption of climate change, I can understand that.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting whether something is fact is indeed stupid.
While I agree that these amendments are political gamesmanship, they are not "voting whether something is fact".
You'll notice in TFA that the amendments are voting on the "sense of the Senate" -- i.e. their purpose is to get Senators' opinions/positions on record, not to determine reality.
Specifically, the Democrats want the Republicans to either publicly acknowledge that climate change is a real problem (thus undercutting their own arguments against doing anything about it), or publicly deny it (and, presumably, thereby look increasingly silly in the future as its effects become more pronounced).
Re: More proof (Score:3)
Opponents of the pipeline wrote the amendment, and they're trying to attach it to the main bill so that in order to vote for the pipeline, they have to vote for "Global Warming is real." Not voting is essentially a vote against the pipeline.
Or potentially a 4th (Score:3)
"I believe that the Earth is getting warmer, however I do not find sufficient evidence to show that this will be a net bad thing for humanity. Further I do not believe that the proposed measures are the wisest course of action, and we should be investigating alternatives such as geoengineering. In any case we should not act yet, as we do not have a solid enough model of what will happen and the net impact on humanity."
They can easily find a way to say "I support science, but think that this issue isn't clea
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Whether the globe is warming or not is not in question. The empirical evidence shows that it is warming. Maybe we can argue some about whether it is mainly due to anthropogenic influences or not but the warming in unequivocal.
There is no hypothesis or theory of global warming, just hypotheses and theory on climate. The finding of anthropogenic causes for global warming is an emergent property of current climate theory.
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So the Earth surface is indeed getting warmer since the times we started to record it, which goes back in some regions to the 18th century. If the average temperature of the Earth's surface is getting warmer (which it does at least since we started to measure it), and if it is happening globally, there is good reason to call it Global Warming.
That there can be
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been political all along. Regardless of the scientific basis, the consensus view of the American public is that they do not want to sacrifice their lifestyles for the environment, especially in this case since the benefits are non-tangible. All of the political debate is simply an extension of that.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how they will feel about their lifestyles in 100 years
They won't, because they'll be dead.
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And that's exactly the point.
It's not quite as short-sighted as business managers only looking after the next quarter, but when people are being asked to sacrifice now for a payoff that is beyond a human lifetime, that's a very hard thing to sell. Especially when no one believes that other major countries such as the BRICs will sacrifice as well.
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Bu-bu-but think of the children.
Seriously, some people do care about the lives of their children and grandchildren.
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Unless the President's plan is enacted. If we do what the President suggests, sea levels will rise 1 or 2 mm less. Everyone shorter than 2 mm will thank us for our sacrifice.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fundamentally impossible to remove the politics from the science if your solution to the problem is political. It's hard to imagine any solutions to a global problem like Global Warming that aren't political short of some miracle technology coming out of nowhere that magically solves the problem.
They already have (Score:5, Informative)
The scientific method is for experiments. If you wanted to use it to see if global warming was real, you would make a forecast like "The world will get hotter than it's ever been.", and see if it comes true or not. It did come true. Last year was hotter than it has ever been, globally. Scientists were telling us that would happen for years.
It's time to stop denying. It's time to stop saying "they should use the scientific method" when you know full well they have. You know, that is, unless your head is in the ground or your preferred news network is putting it there.
Re:They already have (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly not true. The fashion for some scientists to make names for themselves by producing misleading headlines for their supposed evidence has yet to fizzle.
Was 2014 the warmest it has ever been globally? No.
The satellite records (either one) show no special warmth for 2014 and the BEST record shows no statistical significance to the claim that 2014 was the hottest. Why? Because the tiny increase was well within the error bars of the mean temperature statistic [theregister.co.uk]
Has the global warming hiatus ended? No. Do the climate models reflect this? No.
That said, should Congress be making such a determination? No it shouldn't. But what this Congress is certain to do is cut the funding of climate change to the bone. Then we'll see how much was real and how much was money-powered hype.
Re:They already have (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly not true. The fashion for some scientists to make names for themselves by producing misleading headlines for their supposed evidence has yet to fizzle.
Was 2014 the warmest it has ever been globally? No.
The satellite records (either one) show no special warmth for 2014 and the BEST record shows no statistical significance to the claim that 2014 was the hottest. Why? Because the tiny increase was well within the error bars of the mean temperature statistic [theregister.co.uk]
(The report can be found at http://static.berkeleyearth.or... [berkeleyearth.org])
Your argument is misleading. It is true that the question "which was the hottest year since recording in 1860?" Has three possible answers within the uncertainties, 2014, 2010 and 2005. But to the question "which was the hottest decade since recording in 1860?" has a clear answer: the last one. Of course there will be year-to-year fluctuations. But to look at the plot on page 3 and say "oh global warming has stopped just now" is wishful thinking. Also look at the "Ocean Surface Averages", page 5.
Re:They already have (Score:4, Informative)
Whether 2014 is the warmest in the instrument record or not is beside the point. The continued warming is unequivocal. The only reason that a "hiatus" can be claimed by some is because 1998 was such an extreme outlier year.
Tamino over at Open Mind did a graph of the linear temperature trend since 1970 against the year to year variability. 2014 is right on the linear temperature trend line [wordpress.com] which shows temperatures are increasing without evidence of the increases slowing down. It's just year to year variability that gives you an excuse to think it isn't.
Another way to look at it is to take 10 year slices rather than year to year. That's more of a climate centric view than a year to year weather centric view. Here is a bar graph of warming anomalies in decadal slices since the start of the instrument record. [blogspot.com] Below is a text table of the results for those who don't want to click the link:
GISTemp Decadal Global Surface Temperature
(Anomaly from 1950-1981 mean)
Decade_______Anomaly
1884-1893_____-0.26
1894-1903_____-0.25
1904-1913_____-0.40
1914-1923_____-0.28
1924-1933_____-0.17
1934-1943_____+0.00
1944-1953_____-0.03
1954-1963_____-0.02
1964-1973_____-0.02
1974-1983_____+0.10
1984-1993_____+0.24
1994-2003_____+0.46
2004-2014_____+0.59
It's easy to take a short period and make arguments about it but when you look at it in a way that filters out the short term noise like year to year variability the picture becomes much clearer.
Re:They already have (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is that nothing will convince them, no evidence that is humanly possible to gather that is.
This same statement applies to the question "what evidence would convince you that God exists?"
If the evidence is not humanly possible to gather, then the question is inherently religious, not scientific.
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Too bad your analogy was inherently irrelevant, though. Temperature is testable, gods are not.
Re:They already have (Score:5, Informative)
The NOAA data [noaa.gov] says there has been no hiatus and the 10 hottest individual years have all been since 1998.
Re:They already have (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, we have perfectly good reasons to stop releasing sequestered carbon (by burning oil for fuel) even if we are to ignore the atmospheric output of the process. We have to work progressively harder to get a given energy input. Technological advances that allow us to extract additional sequestered carbon, like fracking, are not infinite in nature. Eventually we must reach an energy balance between the energy required for extraction and the source of energy extracted. So changes in the direction of reducing release of sequestered carbon and finding other energy inputs to society, or reducing the need for those inputs, are called for regardless of whether it is going to get too warm.
Re:They already have (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right. A vast international liberal cabal is adjusting historical temperatures. I guess they've replaced all of the almanacs in libraries with cleverly rewritten versions. And so on. In every country, regardless of the languages they speak and write.
And the last several years have just happened to be increasingly hot.
Take a look at any of the photos of the Earth from space. The planet is big. But the atmosphere is really thin! You can easily tell the difference in pressure if you only go up 8000 feet or so. It is that piece that we're unbalancing.
Re:They already have (Score:5, Informative)
Um. That dozen years was the hottest dozen in history. Much more clearly than any individual year was the hottest. You might wave away one year as inaccuracy. But not 10 or more. See the NOAA data here [noaa.gov].
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There are other sciences like astronomy, geology and paleontology that have no greater experimental basis than current climate theory. Do you feel the same way about them?
Re:More proof (Score:4, Funny)
Would you prefer the sex of the chicken by determined by an unaccountable, autocratic out-of-touch socialist-in-a-bubble dictator?!
Most farmers are like that.
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Imagine, filling in natural flood plains and swamp lands to build luxury ocean front condos leads to flooding in those and surrounding areas during the king tides (highest tides of the year).
Flooding in Florida has a lot less to do with the minimal, and often unmeasurable, sea level rise than it does with greedy construction practices. The entire state is one big sink hole waiting to happen and while a lot of it's problem are man made, most aren't really related to AGW.
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Get these people on the record so we know who to listen to when it comes to science related stuff.
How is that going to help anything? The voters don't care about science, and don't know jack shit about it. The voters actually believe that climate change is a hoax, that the moon landings never happened, that vaccines cause autism, etc. So they're naturally going to elect politicians who parrot the same stuff.
Vote on the negative (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish the vote were worded "Is the denial of climate change a hoax?"
Re:Vote on the negative (Score:4, Informative)
A vote does not make it so (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA Doesn't Think So (Score:5, Informative)
NASA seems to think that climate change is being caused by human activities [nasa.gov] and they back it up with a lot of references to studies on the matter. IMHO, we're never going to convince people to change their behaviors or give up their luxuries. If we want to make a difference we need to develop the technologies that make it more advantageous to adopt the renewable solution (like kick-ass cars and cheaper home energy).
Re:NASA Doesn't Think So (Score:4, Insightful)
Democrats aren't trying to legislate the truth of climate change. They're trying to put those who think it's a hoax on record to use as political ammunition against them.
If we can vote on reality... (Score:4, Funny)
If we can simply use the vote to determine reality, why are we bothering to vote on climate change. I say we treat the senate gavel like a genie's lamp and vote on the realities of cancer, aliens, death, and god.
Re:If we can vote on reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about determining reality, it's about determining which politicians will openly accept reality.
Are they voting on whether Pi = 22/7 also? (Score:3, Interesting)
Saying whether or not climate change is real, is not real, or is unknown is not a statement for non-subject-matter experts to make until/unless there is enough evidence that it is clearly real or clearly not real to the layman. If either one were the case, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
In other words, every Senator who isn't either a subject-matter expert or an arrogant person and who doesn't want people to think he is in one of those two groups must abstain if this comes to a vote.
Remember this sort of nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:From the outside... (Score:5, Informative)
Every country does deeply stupid things.
Look at the EU and their policy on GMO. It is ENTIRELY fear based. They just label something as GMO which is completely useless and people are taught that GMO is bad period. Even research into GMO has almost entirely ended in Europe. It doesn't matter that their own studies show the ones they have tested are safe they continue to be against it not just in the EU but world wide. The EU is a pretty major factor in stopping the usage of golden rice.
This kind of thing can go both ways.
I am currently in Germany working on a Masters degree and PhD but some of my professors have already told me that to do my work once I am done I will have to go back to the USA since DNA editing on humans is pretty much defacto illegal in the EU and they don't allow the research into it either. However in the USA we have companies using technology like CRISPR/CAS9 to silence genes that causes diseases like Huntington's disease. Imagine a one time injection and you are completely cured of a horrible genetic disease? Imagine being able to replace faulty tumor suppressor genes and virtually wipe out cancer.
However none of that matters. People in different areas of the world have a world viewpoint and then they pick and choose the science that supports it and try to claim superiority over others based on that. With liberals in the USA we have the anti-vaccine movement and that is something that conservatives are almost universal in support of and the anti-vaccine movement is massively anti science and should be stopped before they cause the deaths of tens of millions of people. We have the conservatives not accepting human damage to the environment. We have Europeans against genetic engineering. We have countries where their religious beliefs means that women are second class citizens.
The human race is a bunch of barely evolved thugs and barbarians and they like to claim they are civilized by choosing bits and pieces of science to support their worldview and make fun of anyone else that does not accept that science also while ignoring the stuff they refuse to accept.
Re:From the outside... (Score:5, Interesting)
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With liberals in the USA we have the anti-vaccine movement and that is something that conservatives are almost universal in support of and the anti-vaccine movement is massively anti science and should be stopped before they cause the deaths of tens of millions of people.
FYI recently the anti-vaccine movement has been picked up by the religious right, preaching it from the pulpit (literally), so while it is still primarily a liberal cause, I now get anti-vaccine propaganda in my Facebook feed from both sides of the aisle.
A truly historical day! (Score:3)
Similar to a state legislature deciding on an official value for pi. I wonder how many Senators took more than a few terms of basic science in pursuit of their law/business degrees?
Further imagine how much lobbyist money is going to be wasted if the vote goes the wrong way and an alternative result is needed? There are much bigger issues to be bought, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
Science is not a matter of consensus (Score:3)
Well, it should not be. I know, I know, unfortunately it is more often than not, but at least it's not as blatantly stupid as this one. Usually there is at least a bit of relevant data to it.
In other words, it's not something you can wish to be or not to be. Whether global warming exists cannot be determined by wanting it to be one way or the other. You can of course vote on whether you want to do act like there is global warming or whether you want to act like there is none. Ok. That's possible.
But whether it exists certainly is beyond your jurisdiction.
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Question: is the sun inedible because it's too hot, or because hydrogen/helium mix just tastes bad?
Re:Climate Change Has Existed Forever -- (Score:4, Funny)
Let's just say that the Scoville units are a wee high on that one...
Re:Don't fall for it (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. Congress is evidence that evolution didn't take place: they are sh*t-flinging apes, still.
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No. The real question is "does climate change fuck us over?" If the answer is "yes" then we need to do something about it whether we caused it or not!
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You are welcome to your opinion, but unless you can show how the scientists are wrong, your opinion is, well, worthless. You also need to show how basic physics is wrong, and how CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. There is, in fact, so much you need to show is wrong for you to be right. You need to overhaul great swathes of science (from biology, chemistry, and physics) for you to be right. Get cracking! You make it sound easy, which makes me wonder why you haven't spent your required 30 minutes and won a No