Bush Says Yes To Global Warming

[CyberGnu]

DanS, you must be an idealist...

In a NYT survey not too long ago, it was reported that 50% of americans believed in creationism. More than 70% believed that UFO's regularly visited earth.

What this tells you is that 70% of americans are stupid, assuming that the 50% that believe in creationism believe in UFO's as well.

The defenition of stupid is in this context 'I have no desire or ability to actually understand the issue, but I also have no desire to accept the words of people who HAVE understood it, and will therefore form an opinion based on my own set of prejudices'.

I'd just as soon they be triple-sure about it before we go doing anything drastic. Even scientists make mistakes, and the prevailing theories can prove to be incorrect.

And how sure do you have to be? If a doctor told you that there is a 90% chance that you will die unless they cut off your hand, would you tell him 'well, since there is only a 90% chance that you are right, I don't think we should do anything drastic?' I sure wouldn't... Even a 50% chance would be enough for me not to risk my life. Hell, you would have to go down to 10% for me to start thinking about NOT cutting my hand off...

And 90+% is what the scientific experts are saying.

[CyberGnu]

Wraith, Id suggest you start readin actual sceintific publications instead of political texts. Nature and Science, for example. There is no debate regarding whether global warming is real. There is no debate on whether humans actions are causing it.

There IS debate about what the exact consequences will be, whether they will be the end of mankind or merely catastropic. There IS debate about what the msot efficient way to minimze the impact is.

Regarding Kyoto, again you go for the political bull around it. Yes, it doesn't reduce CO2 content, but at least it will kill the INCREASE in CO2 emissions. It's not enough, but it is a step. If Bush was sincere in his 'Kyoto isn't good, we need to get something better', he would be calling for MORE STRINGENT clauses... Not his 'ooooh, w can't do anything because the coal industry paid a lot of money to me and I have to be a good bought stooge'.

[DanS]

"What this tells you is that 70% of americans are stupid, assuming that the 50% that believe in creationism believe in UFO's as well."

It must be awful lonely as a self-appointed "smart" person, Cyber. Sounds like a classic case of self selection to me...

"The defenition of stupid is in this context 'I have no desire or ability to actually understand the issue, but I also have no desire to accept the words of people who HAVE understood it, and will therefore form an opinion based on my own set of prejudices'."

That goes both ways. It appears that in the U.S., spatial perception has a lot to do with your opinion. Those in areas of higher population density tend to think like Roland--they are suspicious of what comes out of the exhaust pipe. On the other hand, those in more wide open spaces tend to look at the amount of air pollution as miniscule in comparison to the air available.

Neither case is a true basis for reality, but that's how human perceptions go. Furthermore, neither is a stupid view. Rather, both views rely on the tangiable. Global warming is a theory, having little tangiable impact (one way or another) right now, so you have to wing it.

"If a doctor told you that there is a 90% chance that you will die unless they cut off your hand, would you tell him 'well, since there is only a 90% chance that you are right, I don't think we should do anything drastic?'"

I would go get a second opinion. Further, if he were a psychiatrist and I had a mental illness, I would be quite skeptical.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Roland
I do not like the idea of pumping loads of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere per se. It's a whacky experiment at best.

This is probably the best argument for doing something to reduce pollution in general. I am personally most worried about the health of the oceans. I think that the best way to approach the issue is for governments to enable people to have choices, and for people to make the choices that have the least impact. Kyoto goes about this completely backwards.

Btw, I walk the walk believe it or not. I have never owned an automobile, a real rarity for someone of my age, income, and nationality. Aside from being in better health (because I walk rather than drive), I found that not owning a car has also made me a good deal wealthier, enough so that I was able to purchase a home and pay off the mortgage last year, well ahead of most of my contemporaries.

[Wraith]

--"Well, the economic high cost predictions I've seen are pretty crappy."

You'd know that area better than I do. Have you seen any decent ones you could point out?

--"I'd see this a bit more flexible. Even if we are not too sure, we can do a little."

But that's the problem. We are not at all sure, and even accepting the claims this does effectively nothing. IIRC, Kyoto's own predictions show it making a change of less than .2 degrees C. This is so completely insignificant it wouldn't even show up against normal margin-of-error.

As far as pumping loads of gas go, humans aren't even the major cause of CO2. Keep in mind that this gas is part of the usual lifecycle, and is necessary for plants to produce oxygen. Everyone calling it pollution is a bit off the mark, as it's technically an essential trace gas.

--"What this tells you is that 70% of americans are stupid,"

In that context, yup. I suspect that ratio holds about true for most of the world, though. Probably higher in unindustrialized areas, but about the same.

--"And 90+% is what the scientific experts are saying."

Some. That's an important qualifier. Some experts. Not all. Many (a surprisingly large percentage) of those making these claims also have something to gain financially or politically from doing so.

--"Nature and Science, for example."

Nature and Science have become political magizines on some subjects. Some of their articles over the past two years have made me completely lose any respect for them.

--"There is no debate regarding whether global warming is real. There is no debate on whether humans actions are causing it."

You are the one who needs to brush up on your recent science articles. There is a lot of debate about both of them. No one has yet to even prove that the earth is in a warming cycle, much less that it's outside normal variations or that humans are causing it. We simply do not have enough data to evaluate this problem with the "90%" certainty y'all are claiming.

Wraith
At least I have a positive attitude about my destructive habits.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Sadly no....choosing a president this past election truly was a situation of choosing the lesser of two evils...*sigh* It used to be the case that some really talented, qualified people would run for office...now, it seems like we get the (comment removed to get around the auto-censor).

"The Shrub" is an idiot (which is why the nickname stuck in the first place). He's got some great handlers--and even they have a tough time keeping his idiocy from showing once in a while, witness the "Are there any blacks in Brazil" and the "Axis of Evil" comments, to name but two), but by and large, this guy, like the other candidates in the previous election, is simply NOT presidential material.

Worse, this particular idiot has absolutely zero concern for larger issues like the environment, or doing anything substantive to improve the looming healthcare crisis in this country...nahhh, he'd rather run up the debt to new record highs, pay back his rich-boy buddies who financed his campaign, and let his handlers suck up a few more citizens' rights and put an increasing amount of power into the federal government's hands.

Way to go Shrub!

-=Vel=-
(who fervently hopes that in the NEXT presidential election, we'll have some candidates who are at least the equals of their Washington handlers)

I wholeheartedly agree.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

actually if I recall correctly wether global warming is an issue is not at all understood by scientists who study it

there are a lot of sceintists, though, who do not study it who are sure that global warming is an issue and act against it

I personally think that while global warming might be real, man-made, and a problem, that there are far worse things we should be dealing with respect to pollution (like our oceans)

Jon Miller

[CyberGnu]

Wraith:

Some. That's an important qualifier. Some experts. Not all. Many (a surprisingly large percentage) of those making these claims also have something to gain financially or politically from doing so.

Nature and Science have become political magizines on some subjects. Some of their articles over the past two years have made me completely lose any respect for them.

These two quotes summarizes your position pretty well. Reality doesn't correspond to your notion of how the world should look, so the people and venues reporting reality must be distorting the 'truth'.

The team of scientist who were appointed by Bush to report on global warming concluded that there is a better than 90% possibility that global warming is real and man-made? Ooooh, they must have monetary reasons to lie.

Nature and Science, the two most respected science journals there is dare report facts that doesn't conclusive dispell global warming? They must be lying, under the control of aliens wanting us to stop all industry to prepare for their invasion!

Luckily we have real scientists out there who are not afraid to speak the truth. They might not have fancy degrees, hell, they usually don't have college diplomas, but I can tell they are right because they report what I know is true. Bill O'Reilly, keep on talking!


Personally, I find it more likely that Bush is controlled by former Enron executives through electrodes in his head than that Science and Nature are 'politicized'...

[CyberGnu]

DanS, what self-selection? When someone disregards a warning such as 'do nt operate heavy machinery after taking xxx' we call their subsequent dismemberment stupid. It is very simple.

Not having a tangiable effect is not a defense for inaction. Both car emissions and industrial/energy pollution are problems, both should be addressed.

And not believeing in global warming because it is not tangiable is amazingly stupid... Do you believe in atomic theory? No one has seen an atom. We can't 'prove' it is true. We don't even understand it 100%. But we CAN predict the effects of it, and we can act upon it.


And when the second opinion confirms the first? And the third? And fourth to twentieth? When the only people who don't agree that there is a 90% chance of you duying are Jehovas wintesses and one old witchdoctor you found in swamp, what would you choose?

[Roland]

Dan:

"I would go get a second opinion."

We are at the 50th or so opinion now. Dubya will make it 100, hoping that 1 will say it ain't so. Then he'll have a pretzel, I hope.

Sikander:

"I have never owned an automobile, a real rarity for someone of my age, income, and nationality."

Ha! So you are that other strange person in the western world besides me.

Wraith:

"Have you seen any decent ones you could point out?"

The European Commission has done one on the impacts of Kyoto and they came up with 0.1-0.2 % of GDP. You can argue on that of course, but it is much more realistic than the scare stories. If I say emission cap = GDP cap and capitalize that "loss", I can easily come up with fantasy figures in the 10-50 trillion $ range.
One key aspect for me is that energy consumption and pollution is heavily subsidised anyway, so correcting that makes economic sense regardless.

"Kyoto's own predictions show it making a change of less than .2 degrees C. This is so completely insignificant it wouldn't even show up against normal margin-of-error."

Kyoto is designed as a first step. Industrialised nations set limits, try technologies and emission trading etc, and seek to get this applied globally. I favour kyoto not as a saviour, but as a limited insurance policy.

"Everyone calling it pollution is a bit off the mark, as it's technically an essential trace gas."

True, but the fact is we are tempering with the CO2 etc levels and circles. If you say it's plant food, fine - but let's say the amazonas takes it in, but warming changes the regional climate and the whole crap burns down: voila, a load of this stuff in the atmosphere very quickly.

As I said, I do not like unnecessary freak experiments on that scale.

[Tolls]

DanS:
"Y2K was a big waste of time, for instance, so mass delusion is not an unknown phenomenon. "

This comment really annoys me.
Y2K was a very real problem that, if it had not been tackled, would have caused some serious disruption in the financial industries of the world, as well as a fair number of other industrial areas.

I know from our own systems here that if we hadn't put in thorough checks for the problem that our billing systems would have failed, and been out of action for a good couple of months...I know of a large number of financial systems in the City (from Poly colleagues) that would have collapsed if people hadn't been jabbed into looking into their legacy code...I know of power station systems (and defence systems) which also had the same problem and would have failed come Jan 1st if people hadn't been nagged about the problem.

Just because the papers didn't have a clue about what they were dicussing doesn't mean the problem wasn't there...in fact this strikes me as a rather good parallel to the Global Warming situation, where people think pundits are qualified to argue the point and the people with the knowledge are somehow lining their pockets.

What are the bets that if counter measures were put in place that dealt with the problem (thus reducing or negating the effects) we'll have people like you proclaiming that Global Warming was "a big waste of time"?

[Wraith]

--"These two quotes summarizes your position pretty well."

Well, that's your opinion of mine, but you can't change reality. Everything that actually predicts human-caused global warming is seriously flawed. Even the people running the computer models admit this. The NASA scientist that first gave global warming a credibility boost has scince rescinded his congressional testimony. The temperature records that show an increasing warming trend recently has all sorts of problems that bias the more recent numbers high, and that's before they got massaged in to the whole "double hockey sticks" thing.
There just is not any "proof" on this issue, and the theory is very shaky.

And my problems with Nature and Science are not exclusive to Global Warming (especially with Science). Some of the stuff I've seen coming out of these magazine recently (especially the incredibly unprofessional response to Bjorn Lomborg's book) simply does not belong in anything pretending to be a professional science magazine.

And as far as they go on global warming, here's an old example of why I have a problem with them (although I'm sure you're going to dismiss this out of hand).

--"The team of scientist who were appointed by Bush"

See, you're already wrong here. That team was appointed by Clinton. They just weren't cancelled by Bush. And their study is based on the same known-faulty data and computer models that everything else is.
Actually, this one was rather worse than usual. It's completely based on the"National Assessment on Climate Change", which was released during the Clinton Presidency (and the Gore campaign), but had to be retracted after a federal lawsuit claiming it was unlawfully prepared. Not that this stopped the EPA from releasing it, of course.

Now, your choice of ad homeniem attacks against anyone who disagrees with your opinion is interesting. It is also typical of this debate.
Global warming is, for most of the people talking about it, an issue of zealotry, not of science. There are plenty of scientists (yes, actual scientists, including climatologists, more of whom signed a petition oppossing Kyoto than were ever actually involved with it) who disagree with the theory of global warming, and they attack the theory and the data. The people who support global warming almost never offer counter arguments other than personal insults and the same sort of "the sky is falling" scare rhetoric you've been blowing.

--"One key aspect for me is that energy consumption and pollution is heavily subsidised anyway, so correcting that makes economic sense regardless."

I definitely agree with doing this, but I do not want it done under the ageis of "global warming protection". The right ends for the wrong reason are still a bad thing.

As for the CO2 goes, I'm going to have to look up some numbers tonight. Humans are not as big a deal here as everyone seems to think, but I don't have the references handy at the moment.

Wraith
"If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

[Sava]

Bush's attitude and policy sum up what conservatives are.... selfish... They are too selfish to give up or change their way of life. They would rather pollute and destroy the Earth than pay more for a vehicle or use public transportation. They don't care about the environment at all because they know they'll be dead before the effects become disasterous.

[Roland]

" I definitely agree with doing this, but I do not want it done under the ageis of "global warming protection". The right ends for the wrong reason are still a bad thing."

Well the US should easily achieve the Kyoto goals by becoming more energy efficient, and that could be achieved by ending subsidies and adding externalities. Whether people support this for economic reasons or for climate protection is a secondary issue for me.

[Ned]

Wraith, What you are saying is very interesting. I did a quick search on the internet and found the below report by a number of scientists who agree that the prior statements by global warming advocates are not as reliable as they say they are. The report calls for more investment in making the computer models accurate, etc.

Pretty much what you've been saying.

http://www.marshall.org/ClimateSciencePolicy.pdf

[CyberGnu]

No Wraith, in your world the data that shows the global temperature rising 0.6 +-0.2 degrees doesn't correspond with your view what is right, and so they are obviously 'flawed'.

Tha the future computer projections are uncertain is quite natural. We have no way to estmate effects such as release of the methane trapped by permafrost, decreases refelction of light due to smaller icecaps etc.

But this is not the point of the projections. The sole purpose of them is to put a reasonable estimate for the temperature change, so that other scientists can model the change in weather patterns and climate. The temperature is not an end in itself.

And while I'm sure the screaming will commence that these preditions are even more uncertain, that is also beside the point. Regardless of how exact they are, the scientific consensus is that the global impact will range from bad to catastropic.

[CyberGnu]

If you think that it is insulting to be called on the fact that your'd rather trust O'Reilly over Science and Nature, well, I can understand that. I would find it intensely insulting, but then again, I never would... Just like I would not trust greenpeace over Science and Nature.

I find this statement 'plenty of scientists' intriguing. I've tried to find this petition, but apparently no one wants to publish the actual names... Just raw data such as '15000 people, 6000 of which with advanced degrees in science have signed the petition'. Minor details such as that it was sent out on official NAS letterhead while not being condoned by the NAS is usually left out, and there is never a breakdown on how many of the scientists who signed it are in relevant sciences. I woulnd't consider my signature relevant even though I have a PhD in chemistry - I'm not an atmospheric chemist.

I guess you call the multitude of data presented in peer reviwed journals personal insults....

[CyberGnu]

BTW, I don't know what you refer to when you talk about the 'unprofessional treatment of Bjorn Lomburg'.

A searh on Lomborg in Nature doesn't give a single hit. In Science there are two hits, one is a review of his book, and the other is a news item saying that danish scientists are alarmed over Lomborgs appointemnt to a danish envornmental agency...

I guess it is unprofessional to give an honest review...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Say hello to sunny beaches.

ROTF

I bet Canada and UK should be the biggest proponensts of global warming. (with the scandinavian countries & Russia too

The only thing is that 90% of world's population will come to seek bread at your door

[chequita guevara]

I doubt very highly whether any computer model would accurately predicate past weather events. If you rewound time, and ran the past century forward again, weather would not repeat itself.

The 600 pound gorilla of the problem, though, is, regardless of what we do now, it won't start having an effect for generations. Global warming is here, it's going to get worse, and there's nothing we can do about it. By the time we start to have an effect, the consequences will already have happened.

So, does that mean we should do nothing? Well, no. I'm still hoping for a cure to old age (seriously), so I'd like the weather not to go to hell in handbasket.

[DanS]

Tolls: No doubt that it needed to be taken care of. But it simply wasn't a more than $200 billion problem that it was hyped into being, in the U.S. alone. It has distorted the technology market for years.

It was a one byte problem, costing us $200 billion, for God's sake! You better believe that I want to know more about global warming because the price tag will be fvcking enormous.

[DanS]

"And when the second opinion confirms the first? And the third? And fourth to twentieth? When the only people who don't agree that there is a 90% chance of you duying are Jehovas wintesses and one old witchdoctor you found in swamp, what would you choose?"

I know that you're impatient about this supposed problem, but to my mind there hasn't been much of a dialogue on the issue, at least here in the States. And the science seems in its infancy. Further, I'm surprised that scientists such as yourself aren't being more skeptical, since that's part of your job.

This debate reminds me that 15 years ago, some scientists were talking about overpopulation in apocalyptic terms. But here, 15 years later, we have a clearer idea that it's probably not much of a problem.

Re the "self selection" on smartness, the comment was meant to show that your criteria are entirely made up by you. It's like any random Joe saying, "you know I thought about it some, and figured out that I'm smart and most other people are stupid!"

[Ned]

I don't know if Kyoto allows credit for CO2 sinks, but the longer growing seasons in the North should automatically give all the Northern countries credit for CO2 reductions.

I half recall that the US was asking for such credits, but this was denied by the Europeans. This is one of the reasons the US has chosen a separate path from Europe.

[CyberGnu]

Ned, the Europeans caved on that issue, but the US refused regardless...

[CyberGnu]

DanS, well, that's your opinion. I think it's quite an objective measurement... If you kill yourself because you disregard a warning, you die from stupidity.

Take a look at the darwin award for prime examples.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave


ROTF

I bet Canada and UK should be the biggest proponensts of global warming. (with the scandinavian countries & Russia too

The only thing is that 90% of world's population will come to seek bread at your door

Let them eat cake.

[CyberGnu]

DanS, I am sceptic, but right now the data suggests that we are causing global warming.

I'm not well versed in atmosspehric science to interpret the raw data, so I have to rely on people who are to do that. Since I don't know them either personally or professionally, I have to rely in turn on peer-reviewed journals and possibly non-politically affiliated commissions.

But to just say 'no' to the combined scientific consensus is not being sceptic, just ignorant...

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Let them eat cake.

She didn't say cake. She said brioche...

[KrazyHorse]

She was just a lousy German anyway. What did she know?

[CyberGnu]

BTW, Ned, you might want to look for more objective sources. The Marshall organization is sponsored by Exxon, the Olin Fund and the Bradley Fund (both well known right-wing sponsors)...