FredHayek wrote: It can be awful hard to predict the future, especially fifty years ahead. So many variables, especially when you consider technology.
It's hard to predict 5 years ahead with something as dynamic as our planet. Just ask Al Gore who predicted that arctic ice would be gone by last year. More alarmism that didn't come to pass. I heard that the most current threat to polar bears was too much spring ice.
Good points. And some of the earlier predictions have actually been reversed. People thought snow would disappear from parts of America, instead we were getting record amounts last winter and another wet winter is being predicted for 2014-2015.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
BlazerBob wrote: Who's cushie pockets are being lined and what accurate and consistent predictions are coming true?
OmniScience wrote: Sounds like the IPCC. They manipulate their data and their models are still wrong.
You didn't watch the videos I linked above, didja?
FredHayek wrote: It can be awful hard to predict the future, especially fifty years ahead. So many variables, especially when you consider technology.
If you look at the graphs of what is predicted for future climate, the reason you see three different scenarios (aggressive mitigation, middling mitigation, or business as usual), and large variations in temperature and sea level rise estimates is precisely because they cannot be pinpoint-accurate. That's why they also assign confidence values with each prediction. You don't see estimates that say that Colorado is going to average exactly 103.2 degrees by 2045, you see a range of temps and a 90-95% confidence value in that prediction.
OmniScience wrote: It's hard to predict 5 years ahead with something as dynamic as our planet. Just ask Al Gore who predicted that arctic ice would be gone by last year. More alarmism that didn't come to pass. I heard that the most current threat to polar bears was too much spring ice.
Yes, more of the usual denier falsehoods.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/1 ... ction-2013
And why do people keep bringing up Al Gore? He's not a scientist, he's an environmental activist. Scientists don't use him as their source for information, does negating his crappy second-hand claims really bolster anti-AGW claims? That's like me arguing that Anthony Watts is full of hot air - that's not the point as it doesn't have anything to do with whether the science of global warming is correct or not, he's not a scientist doing research that negates any claims. The important part of the equation is the accumulation of decades of scientific data supporting the conclusions that climate scientists have made, and that no credible alternative data have been discovered to negate any of that data.
FredHayek wrote: Good points. And some of the earlier predictions have actually been reversed. People thought snow would disappear from parts of America, instead we were getting record amounts last winter and another wet winter is being predicted for 2014-2015.
Just curious, what earlier predictions have been reversed? Were these people who said snow would disappear from America climate scientists or activists, and what exactly did they claim and when?
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
ScienceChic wrote: When the goal posts have to keep getting moved that's when you know you're being fed a line of crap. First it was "there is no global warming, we need to study it more to be sure" to "there's global warming but it's not our fault" to "there's global warming and we have a small part in it, but it won't be as bad as the 'alarmists' claim, actually it'll be beneficial for plants" to "there's global warming and we're directly influencing it, but drastically doing anything to stop it will severely damage our economy".
Wash, Rinse, Repeat... Exactly what I've been saying for years.
The people claiming snow would disappear were left wing pundits. Just like Al Gore predicting that there was a good chance sea ice would disappear in the northern hemisphere. So while SC's scientists are making predictions, the media is printing the most dire scenarios for ratings possibly, and also to try to encourage citizens to support goverment limits on fossil fuel use?
But after those dire scenarios don't happen, people stop listening. And while many Americans, especially the young, are still concerned about global warming, it is far down on the list of problems they want world governments to solve first.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
I'll tell you what's even further down the list for "the young"--worrying about whether doing anything about it will "damage the economy" for the fossil-fuel companies that crank out the denier b.s. that the Righties suck up while destroying the ecosystem of the planet.
So you or others are disbelieving what the scientists say because left wing pundits with political agendas and the media going for ratings is screwing up? I'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense to me. If your doctor told you that drinking arsenic every day at a certain dose would absolutely kill you at some point within x years to x years, and that a higher dose will kill you faster, and a lower dose would take longer, and none at all would lower your risk as much as possible, would you then decide not to listen to them because you heard on the news that a politician said that the effects of arsenic were still unclear and further study was needed?
I see people say all the time that the media is biased, it's coverage sucks, it can't be trusted...so why believe it now over credible sources of information? My recommendation would be to turn off the television, walk away from the blog, and go read the IPCC and primary journal articles for yourselves. Make up your own minds and stop listening to the people you claim you don't believe in the first place. This is too important an issue to have second-hand information coming from talking heads decide your opinion for you.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
Why the Climate Change crowd won't be able to wean the world off fossil fuels?
1) Americans think short term, more concerned about current problems.
2) It is more expensive to replace fossil fuels with alternative energies when incomes are stagnant.
3) Fossil fuels are one of the great success stories in the current domestic economy, with North Dakota, Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio all doing very well economically.
4) And even if you did convince Americans to read the source reports, and take a reduction in their standard of living to help out the planet, how are you going to convince the rest of the world to take these same hits to their economies.
I know we have heard that green jobs will save the day and create jobs but so far the record has been pretty dismal. There are people who are willing to pay more to be ecological, I have solar, and so do my brother and two sisters. My brother even uses solar to help power both of his business locations, but we are all using much more fossil fuels than solar.
The only solution I see? If the world population starts declining, in the western world, we are starting to see that, both Japan and Russia are supposed to lose a lot of people by 2050. And as more populations become urban, they are having smaller families, and are giving birth at later ages, 30's instead of teens.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
So here's the new stick to stir up the climate deniers:
Climate Contrarians Cook Up New 'Controversy' Misplaced cries of McCarthyism: an attempt to muddy the climate change waters. Michael E. Mann Director of Penn State Earth System Science Center;
Author of 'Dire Predictions' and 'The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars'
Recently, a somewhat obscure scientific journal rejected a paper. Somehow, that made the front page of the London Times and spawned a number of articles in the right-wing press. How in the world does a rejected manuscript warrant front-page media coverage? Here's how.
A number of recent developments -- widely covered reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Climate Assessment, a popular new cable television series The Years of Living Dangerously produced by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger and featuring prominent figures like Harrison Ford, Leslie Stahl, Matt Damon and Jessica Alba, a report by a blue-ribbon panel of National Security experts, and record drought and a catastrophic, early California fire season -- have dominated the climate change media narrative for months, raising public awareness about the reality and threat of human-caused climate change.
Without the facts on their side or an objective case to be made, the usual suspects behind the climate change denial campaign -- industry front groups and their hired hands -- have once again resorted to their preferred means of distraction: invent a fake scandal, get help trumping it up from sympathetic right-wing media outlets (e.g. The Murdoch-owned London Times and the infamous Drudge Report), and hope to once again dupe the mainstream media into covering the matter as if it had actual merit or significance.
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[The] right-wing media, not content to merely cry "McCarthy," went further. At some point, Bengtsson authored a paper and submitted to Environmental Research Letters (ERL), a respectable if somewhat obscure academic journal. ERL rejected it due to poor quality. One reviewer, however, mentioned that if it were to be published, it would "open the door for oversimplified claims of 'errors' and worse from the climate sceptics media side."
Said skeptic media took that minor and mined quote and (as the quote itself warned would happen,) spun up a controversy claiming the paper wasn't printed because of a "cover-up" to prevent a "damaging review" of climate science.
To shine the light of truth onto this darkly misleading story, ERL took the unusual step of issuing a public response to the spurious accusations, and decided to release the full text of the reviewer's thoughts on Bengtsson's paper. The text shows the reviewer felt the paper wasn't original, provided no new insight and offered no explanation for its main conclusion. And most telling of all? Bengtsson himself disavowed the media's skewed portrayal: "I do not believe there is any systematic 'cover up' of scientific evidence on climate change or that academics' work is being 'deliberately suppressed,' as The Times front page suggests."
So there it is. The man himself doesn't believe the cooked-up controversy presented by conservative media. Any objective examination of the situation finds absolutely no validity to either the claims of McCarthyism or of conspiratorial suppression of science. In fact, the reviewer that "suppressed" Bengtsson's paper offered a number of suggestions to improve its odds of being published. Certainly not something you'd do to a paper you're trying to "suppress."
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The real story here is how desperate the professional climate change denial machine is to fan this dubious matter into yet another faux scandal, even as the observations of climate change come more sharply into focus, from drought to wildfires to flash floods to ice sheet collapse. History will not look back kindly on those who sought to sow false doubt about the growing threat of climate change at the expense of all humanity.
Yessiree...Create a junk-science paper, get it rejected because it's garbage, and then fan the flames in the right-wing echo-chamber into a faux "scandal"...
"The good thing about science is that it's TRUE whether or not you believe in it." .......Neil
DeGrasse Tyson.
JMO I believe a game of Russian Roulette is being played.....I do NOT have children, grand children
so my life will generally NOT be affected (at 67 years of age).....for FUTURE humans on this orb
I extend my condolences.....you will be reaping the rewards of the masses complacency. GOOD
LUCK with that.....
but that makes absolutely no sense to me. If your doctor told you that drinking arsenic every day at a certain dose would absolutely kill you at some point within x years to x years, and that a higher dose will kill you faster, and a lower dose would take longer, and none at all would lower your risk as much as possible, would you then decide not to listen to them because you heard on the news that a politician said that the effects of arsenic were still unclear and further study was needed?
