http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GlobWarm.HTM

An amazingly sane view. A couple of quotes:

"The case for human-caused global warming is simultaneously a lot clearer than George W. Bush believes, and a whole lot less so than Al Gore does. There are legitimate questions about the data, past climate reconstructions, and the computer modeling still to be answered."

"It's a painfully amusing irony that most of the people who are lambasting Republicans for abandoning their traditional fiscal restraint, simultaneously pretend that finite resources are not a problem. We would have neither an energy crisis nor a global warming problem if conservatives treated fossil fuels the way they claim money should be treated. (For that matter, we wouldn't be reeling from the collapse of the sub-prime lending market if conservatives had treated money the way they claim money should be treated.)"

Ya know I've finally figured out a way to describe Global Warming that's sure to piss everyone off but is also 10 thousand percent accurate. 

The Argument for Global Warming is IDENTICAL to Bush's Argument for UMD's in Iraq.

I'm not sayin im just sayin

Use Magical Device? Do you mean WMD's?

Ment WMD but since you noticed UMD lets roll with that. 

I agree that falsifiability is highly important in maintaining logically consistent and true beliefs. Here is a list of things that would certainly make me question anthropogenic climate change:

1) Any evidence that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas.
2) Any evidence that astrophysicists are incorrect in stating that the earth would have a global average surface temperature of -18C if not for the CO2 in our atmosphere rather than the +15C * that we experience with it.
3) Any evidence that shows that humans have not actually caused an increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere.

I think that anyone with half a brain, sorry Breetai but you appear to have less, can see that if CO2 warms the planet and we have increased it by at least 35%, then we must be warming the planet.

All else is debate about how much, what the effects will be, what the best solutions are, whether we have the ability to solve the problem at all, etc., not about the simple statement that we are observably warming the planet today. There is tons of evidence of this for anyone who will look. The glaciers are melting. Birds are migrating earlier in spring and later in fall. Plants bloom earlier (a wisteria that was in bloom in late May when I got married 22 years ago now blooms 2-3 weeks earlier every year). Both earth based and satellite based temperature readings show an increase of 0.8C so far.

There's just so much evidence all founded on the simple fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we have increased it. What part of this do people find so hard to understand?

Are people just in denial because they don't want to believe that we have trashed the planet and that their children will have a horrible place on which to live?

* Those numbers were copied from the climate science text book entitled: Is the Temperature Rising: The Uncertain Science of Global Warming – S. George Philander

The denial is that all that "Evidence" is reverse engineered bullshit.  I was going to lay it out but I just realized that arguing with you is really no different than arguing with the ProLifers since it's not a science it's a religion.

It's not a religion for me.  But I do enjoy poking right wings nutts in the eyes.  Like it or not, you imposing your religion on everyone with government makes you a right wing nut.

Breetai, you are so full of shit the whites of your eyes are turning brown. I told you three things that would make me consider the alternative viewpoint. You have not attempted to argue any of them. What would falsify your own opinion? I think it's you who is clinging to a religious anti-warming opinion based on hope rather than evidence.

“If you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything”
-Ronald Coase

I don't trust either side of the argument simply because both sides have a dog in the fight, and both sides stand to make a ton of money depending on who wins.  I tend to defer to the skeptics though, simply because the radical environmentalists have been trying to sway the public to their way of thinking for several decades now.  First it was the hole in the ozone, then it was acid rain, then it was global warming, now it climate change.  They seem to be throwing anything against the wall to see what sticks, and while doing so, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

I hate to say it but science is crap to me.  Too many times I have heard, “This recent discovery causes us to rethink everything.”  Most recently it was the Ardipithecus thing, and I thought, really?  I thought you guys had that whole evolution thing nailed down.  If science was science there would be no argument.  It should be able to be tested, retested, and give the exact same results.  Scientists are people too, and they have the same needs as the mechanic down the street.  They need to get paid.  They will say anything they need to in order to keep the funds rolling in.  How successful do you think someone would be if they were consistently contrary to the funding organization's goals?  I'd love to go into my story of blissful ignorance to this truth from my first position as an honest manufacturing foreman pitted against the other foreman and his crew.  Come to find out, the boss really liked a lot of BS metrics to send up the ladder, because hey, his pay was based on performance right?  It took me a good year to figure that one out.  But knowing my job enabled me to be able to “torture” the data so that everything was coming up roses, no matter what the actual output was.  I think we've all been there.

Short story long, I am a responsible human being.  I do what I can within my means, but, for God's sake make it easy for us!  I'm not a hippie that lives only to protect the divine mother gaia.  I don't believe that overpopulation is our downfall so I have 3 kids to provide for.  I can't live the way they live, and I sure as hell rage against them when they try to legislate their lifestyle on me.  Their desired laws only hurt the poor and will bring those just making it down a couple of notches.  It's easy living when it's just two hippies living the green dream, it's different when it's five trying to get by.  Most of us cannot afford the onerous lifestyle legislated to us.  For example:

-Outfitted house with stupid florescent bulbs-burn out just as much as incandescent and 5 times as expensive-.
-$900 to make my car smog legal when it runs just fine.
-$300 to replace the EGR valve that rendered my van useless.
-Proposed variable gas tax that keeps a gallon of gas at $5, yeah, that only punishes the rich.
-Proposed tax per mile driven (already in Finland), yeah, that only hurts the rich too.
-Higher taxes on miles or fuel means expensive groceries, yeah, lets teach those rich people a lesson.
-Limiting travel and exchange of goods, it's not progress, it's the 1700's.

The kicker is the 46,000 deaths that have resulted from CAFE standards which forced manufacturers to make smaller cars to comply with fleet mpg standards.  This only confirms what I thought about the watermelons, they are more concerned with the earth than human life, and it makes me sick  This is proof because they only want to increase CAFE standards, not roll them back.  This is coming from a guy that commutes in his '87 1.0 liter Chevy Sprint.  LET PEOPLE CHOOSE.  Spend your green lobbying money on R+D and bring something of value to the marketplace instead of forcing on us what we can't afford it.  Once that happens I will live the green lifestyle because it's affordable, not because it's the law.

Oh yeah, there are 46,000 people, along with their families that could give a rats ass what "science" thinks may or may not happen 50 years from now.

tHE PROBLEM WE HAVE IS PUTTING MEANING to what sci says.
we create our OWN meaning to complected Understanding..
90% of the world ARNT thinkers.
we have a mix of many types of people..and MOST only know WHAT they know.

An opinion from an economist is relevant to science exactly how?


Um ... Let's see.

• The hole in the ozone layer is still a problem but becoming less so because we listened to the scientists who turned out to be exactly correct. This was accomplished through banning the use of chlorofluorocarbons. The ban was effective. Unfortunately, they hang around for a very long time and the ozone layer has still not fully healed.
• Acid rain is less of a problem now because we listened to the scientists and took strong action to fix the problem and partially succeeded. This is actuallly one of the great success stories in environmentalism, despite the ongoing but lesser problem of acid rain today. This was accomplished with a very successful cap and trade system that is considered to be the model for cap and trade in CO2.
• Global warming and climate change are essentially synonyms, so I don't understand why you consider them separate. Climate change is the more precise term. While the planet is indeed observably warmer by about 0.8C, not all places are getting warmer equally, and some are even cooling. Europe will likely cool rather a lot as the gulf stream grinds to a halt. It is already 30% slower.

You really should put away your computer then. It's based on an enormous amount of science, even including quantum mechanics for your semiconductors. If you continue to use your computer and to state that science is crap, you are accepting a much higher level of hypocrisy than most of us are willing to live with. Though all of us are hypocrites to some degree, your degree is beyond that of most people I've come in contact with.


That's because you are reading our awful popular press on the subject. Ardipithecus causes us to rethink very little. It causes us to rethink just how chimp-like our common ancestor with chimps actually was. That's it. The only question that really comes up due to Ardy is whether chimps have also undergone some significant amount of evolution toward a more specialized ape from a more generalized common ancestor. This appears to be the case now given the data from Ardy. Previously, we had thought that our common ancestor was basically someone we'd recognize as a chimp.

Is that really so earth-shattering to you? It's not to me. But, the popular press loves to report it as if it calls everything about evolution into question. It doesn't.


Um ... a really good piece of legislation was introduced, but will likely not pass because corporate america, not the hippies, will oppose it. It's a 32 page very readable climate bill that proposes limited trading in carbon with 75% of the profit being given back to lower and middle income families to help pay for the higher cost of fuel. Unfortunately, corporate america and especially wall street, want cap and trade rather than a simple tax. Many environmentalists have somewhat sold out on the issue as well, or think that the small scale cap and trade of SO2 can be implemented for CO2. I think a tax implemented at the point when the fuel is dug up or imported would make a lot more sense, cost less, and have a greater effect.

http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,7938.0.html


You're concerned only about those 46,000? What about the 70,000 - 130,000 Americans who die every single year due to air pollution? Worldwide, the figure is 5,000,000 per year. That's every year. Year in. Year out. Another 20+ times the victims of 9/11 in the U.S. alone.

Wikipedia cites lower numbers than I usually hear. Feel free to go with these more conservative figures and see how your figures match up. BTW, a source for your 46,000 might be nice to post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution#Health_effects

Ditto for the 70-130,000 per year who die of air pollution.

Have you considered that if everyone were driving smaller vehicles instead of having Naggravators crashing into civics, that we'd probably reduce those 46,000 by a large factor?

What about all the children who die in rollover crashes because those enormo-tanks still rollover a lot more frequently than normal cars and those rollovers are particularly lethal to children?

thatsmychin,

I should add a couple of more points:

1. Good job on reducing your own energy use. I probably shouldn't be so hard on you.
2. Regarding Ardipithecus, if that were to call evolution into question, we would have to throw out all of our medical technology that is heavily based on evolution. For your own future reference, when the popular press makes it sound as if some new fossil calls evolution into question, just check whether they're telling you to throw out your meds. If not, evolution is likely not in any greater doubt than relativity or quantum mechanics, probably in less doubt in fact.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA546CAFEStandards.html

and my favorite daily read that actually swings left:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2716/have-federal-automobile-fuel-safety-standards-increased-the-number-of-automobile-deaths

Yep, more people die each year due to CAFE standards than died in Iraq each year of the war....where's the outrage?

When I said that I find science crap, it's in the research and torturing of the data.  I want to know who funded the research, then I will take (with a grain of salt) the results into consideration.  I usually double or cut result in half depending on who gains from the data.  If the government (NHTSA) does a study to find out how many people its killed, I'm assuming it's probably conservative and it's actually somewhere around 70,000 since 1999.  Where as if your study on deaths attributed to air pollution was funded by environmental groups, the  result would be (-%50) 35,000-65,000.  Both sides lie, both sides want to make money, both sides spend tons of money to try to sway public opinion (Apple, Nke since all manufacturing is done overseas and not subjected to environmental restrictions)(they're not environmental believers, they know that cap and trade will cripple their competition).

The idea that we should just make everyone drive small cars to level the playing field is just silly.  If folks that buy small cars don't know that they are trading safety for gas mileage, maybe it's good they are taken out of the evolutionary tree.

besT CAR IN THE WORLD..
would be a death trap..
DRIVE at your own risk.
It would solve allot of problems including population control...

Its cheap, runs like a BEE running for honey, Lighter then a feather falling from an eagle..50MPG and running like hell..
Crash it and its TOTALED..