Snowpack declines in Rockies unusual compared to past

OmniScience wrote: I'm sorry this is such an emotional issue for you. Science cannot be driven by fears and emotion, but only facts. Emotion drives us away from answers and back to preconceived ideas.

What makes you think that I'm emotional about this? It's hard to portray emotion through writing, but I assure you that I arrived at my current conclusion through calm, rational examination of the data out there. The scientific data itself is factual, but it is discovered, driven, and used by emotional, flawed human beings. The science corrects/reaffirms itself through verification by replication and subsequent experiments/data that further the previous understanding.

First, SC - Here's some of the 10's of thousands of scientists

http://www.petitionproject.org/

That petition was debunked years ago. Feel free to Google Oregon Petition Debunked for more, but here's a few links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... d_Medicine

When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell's field of scientific specialization was listed as "biology." Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names. The current web page of the petition itself states "31,478 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs."[15]

and http://www.desmogblog.com/30000-global- ... propaganda

.1% of Signers Have a Background in Climatology

The Petition Project website offers a breakdown of the areas of expertise for those who have signed the petition.

In the realm of climate science it breaks it breaks down as such:

Atmospheric Science (113)

Climatology (39)

Meteorology (341)

Astronomy (59)

Astrophysics (26)

So only .1% of the individuals on the list of 30,000 signatures have a scientific background in Climatology. To be fair we can add in those who claim to have a background in Atmospheric Science, which brings the total percentage of signatories with a background in climate change science to a whopping .5%.

The page does not break out the names of those who do claim to be experts in Climatology and Atmospheric Science, which makes even that .5% questionable [see my section on 'unverifiable mess" below].

This makes an already questionable list seem completely insignificant given the nature of scientific endeavor.

The actual number is much, much lower. Here's one analysis:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/ ... ith-ds=yes
The list: http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/clim ... table.html

Distinguishing Deniers from Skeptics: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/02/d ... -from.html

OmniScience wrote: I find it interesting that you say

I have never said that I am completely convinced,

Then make statements like this..

Yes, I view it as the most urgent and serious problem facing us today,And until I convince people to start writing to their representatives, and joining in the movement to address this issue, both personally and politically, I will not stop posting about it. I'm fighting for the quality of life that I, my kids, and their kids will be facing

These statements are in confilict with one another. A logical, rational person does not view something as posing a serious threat, and requires a response, unless they are convinced of it.
What to try that again?

I mean exactly what I say - that until convinced otherwise, with credible data that the current warming can be attributed to something other than rising greenhouse gases, which I am entirely open to listening to and accepting and changing my position, then I agree with the 40+ years of accumulated data that this is the most urgent and serious problem facing us today. In life, we must act upon what is known at the time, and be willing to adapt our course when new information is presented. To stay the course is to risk irrelevancy at best, extinction at worst. And yes, logical, rational people make decisions every day with regard to minimizing potential risks without knowing fully whether what they are doing is worth doing or not because it's the smart, preventative thing to do (like eliminating smoking because it has been shown to increase risk of lung cancer, but there are people who've smoked their whole lives without developing cancer and they could be one of those, but quit anyway to reduce that risk).

OmniScience wrote:
that just tells me that you haven't bothered educating yourself about the current state of the science, and merely make regurgitated talking point comments.

Regurgitating talking points? What talking points? There were no talking points. I made a direct reference to the articles where scientists basically stated over and over "we really don't know".... Wow.

Contrarians like to emphasize the uncertainty that climate scientists readily admit, but twist it into more than it is, to confuse the issue and make it look like the acceptance and understanding of global warming is more uncertain than it really is. You see, the weight of the evidence for AGW is such that, at this point, those who have a vested interest in avoiding legislation to deal with it know that their only recourse is to delay such action by creating public uncertainty about the data - make it look like there's controversy when there really isn't (Read Naomi Oreskes' book, Merchants of Doubt - some of the most prominent deniers are former tobacco company scientists who did the same thing with the accumulating research linking cigarette use and cancer risk). Saying that "How little we know about the sun and it's influence on our planet" is one such statement - it emphasizes what's unknown, rather than taking into consideration what is known, and how confident scientists are in the predictions that they make - and they even put confidence levels on the predictions that they do make so you can see how much evidence there is to back up a particular prediction (less evidence means lower confidence values - it's all right there in the IPCC report). I quoted some of the science known about solar influence on climate, and the uncertainties are talked about in there, and none of them devalue what's predicted for future warming. Your statement is a broad generalization, often used by contrarians, which is why I classified it as a talking point.

OmniScience wrote: Regarding Cap and Trade. I apologize if I made it sound as if you support Cap and Trade when you do not. However, the AGW agenda IS what is pushing legislation of this kind. This is legislation that is nothing more than a Co2 shell game that will burden citizens, impinge liberties, and produce massive corporate profits.

I agree that the support for this continues, and is misguided. That's why I post information from those sources that don't support it.

OmniScience wrote: Last, and most importantly, I listed quotes from many leading scientists from around the world and instead of responding to them you try to shoot the messenger. This speaks volumes about your position and validates my assumtion that you wouldn’t listen to other views and that I was wasting my time.

It does not validate your assumption that I wouldn't listen to other views - you didn't address my points. I ask for scientific data, and my points to be addressed, not general quotes about the state of the science that deflect from that. Let me say that just because I speak forcefully about this issue, it does not mean in any way shape or form that I am not open to opposing viewpoints. I pride myself on being a skeptic - I continually read sources that I do not agree with in order to find out to correct for my biases, and see if there's something that I've missed or haven't considered. Science is a journey and the most successful are those who are willing to, at times, embrace the absurd and outrageous, keep their minds open, and be willing to drop the paradigms that they've held dear their whole careers when the evidence presented negates them.

I find it very telling that there's been no answer on my summary of the problem of fossil fuel use and CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere or little acknowledgment of the documentation of how accurate the climatologists have been in predicting temps over the last several years (and that maybe they aren't so full of crap)...

AV8OR wrote: The world is ever-changing and that is life. If the tree-huggers are SO CONCERNED, why are they still driving cars?

BTW, just because you drive that PRIUS up the mountain doing 80 mph, it doesn't mean you are environmentally conscerned! Just a closet hypocrit?

Because those who advocate for this issue to be addressed understand that it cannot be done cold-turkey overnight. It takes time to create and convert to new infrastructure and ways of living, which is why we need to start sooner rather than later - it'll be less expensive and have a greater chance of working to blunt some of the more severe effects building in the system. Not everyone has a lifestyle that lends itself to following Ed Begley's example, and neither would I personally expect anyone to do something that I myself am not ready to do. But to wring our hands and say "It's too big a problem that won't even impact us greatly in our lifetimes", or "It'll kill our economy" without considering how it'll help our economy, and ourselves personally, or cry "Why should the U.S. bother if China and India aren't going to", are, in my opinion, weak-a$$ excuses.