Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Denying Climate Change 787
cowtamer writes "The Utah State Assembly has passed a resolution decrying climate change alarmists and urging '...the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.' Here is the full text of H.J.R 12." The resolution has no force of law. The Guardian article includes juicy tidbits from its original, far more colorful, version.
I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a blend of government officials and scientists, does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers;
What do you propose to collect independent data from 1950 to 2010? Time travel? Of course you have to rely on global climate researchers.
I more than understand their concerns with cap and trade but some of these premise statements are a bit off track:
WHEREAS, the recently completed Copenhagen climate change summit resulted in little agreement, especially among growing CO2-emitting nations like China and India, and calls on the United States to pay billions of dollars to developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions at a time when the United States' national debt will exceed $12 trillion;
So what the state of Utah is saying is that since no one else is taking this seriously, we shouldn't have to? I agree that it will hurt us economically and competitively with other nations but you have to look at what scientific evidence we have before you mire this in those sorts of things.
WHEREAS, according to the World Health Organization, 1.6 billion people do not have adequate food and clean water; and WHEREAS, global governance related to global warming and reduction of CO2 would ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty:
Funny that absent from their "concerns" of foreign citizens is the statement that "increasing temperatures will increase drought and famine in equatorial developing nations resulting in starvation and displacement." Third world peoples will be the first to feel the effects of climate change while people like me in the United States will hear about this on the news. We have the resources and means to deal with the beginnings of it, they don't. Their governments will have bigger problems than debt and slowed economic development.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of H. [ the ] .H climate data H. [ conspiracy ] .H and global warming science can be substantiated.
A "full and independent investigation" is exactly what the EPA tried to do. Problem is that everyone is on the planet. Good luck finding sentient beings to do an 'independent investigation' of our planet. Anyone else has a stake in this one way or the other because they live here.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What do you propose to collect independent data from 1950 to 2010? Time travel? Of course you have to rely on global climate researchers.
It would also have to be a very far sighted researcher to created biased data back in the 50s. There would have to be an incredibly massive conspiracy to skew the data decades before the theories were postulated.
"Hey, let's make our data look like it is getting warmer and see where that takes us."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It would also have to be a very far sighted researcher to created biased data back in the 50s. There would have to be an incredibly massive conspiracy to skew the data decades before the theories were postulated.
Or, you could change the data retroactively:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/ [theregister.co.uk]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/05/goddard_nasa_thermometer/ [theregister.co.uk]
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Informative)
The Register has zero credibility when it comes to climate science because it has spent the last few years creating countless articles, many of which are full of not just inaccuracies, but sometimes outright lies. I'm sure they have the odd good point in there, but it's impossible to tell the agenda based propaganda from the valid arguments, which is actually quite ironic when that's their argument against professional climate research.
Really, you might as well have just linked to the pope's official blog in a discussion about whether god exists as evidence that he does. If The Register is the best source you can find, then you simply do not have a real source. I'm not exactly pro-AGW theory- I'm somewhat undecided, becoming more skeptical, but any counter evidence has to be a bit more solid than something coming from The Register or the likes of Climate Audit which those articles use as their sources.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Informative)
But that's just it, this is part the problem with the whole anti-Global Warming crowd. They keep repeating this line, until people like you repeat it too:
"Give us the programs and data so any high school science student can run the programs and get your results, then let "real" programmers look over the code for stupid mistakes, and real scientists check the data for stupid errors, then we might be on the way to science. All we have right now is "The dog ate my homework"."
Yet the data is available, and always has been, here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/ [realclimate.org]
Sure the CRU's model isn't available but so what?- I believe others are available. The data is there for you to come up with your own conclusions, how many people would even understand the CRU's modelling system that aren't climate scientists themselves and hence part of the so-called conspiracy anyway?
The data is there, I'm just waiting for someone to do an objective study on it to show something contrary to the professional climatologists conclusion from it, yet all we get is this repeating of the myth that the data isn't available. Some data isn't, but most of it is- enough to be able to do peer review and conduct your own counter-studies.
If there was anything coming out of the denier crowd that was useful then great, they might have a stronger case, but right now? They are for the most part just making shit up and using half-stories that ignore the all important context.
50s? not nearly that far... (Score:3, Informative)
Incidentallty since around that time global warming really became a political issue and a lot of money was thrown at the problem. It's not that hard to imagine that some people will cherry-pick or fudge some data to get a better grant after that...
My rule with dubious science is: 'Follow the money', if anyone has a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And Gov. Perry and the Utah government stand to gain, so they're also taking BS? So, basically, everyone is wrong?
By definition, the only people who can research a question thoroughly enough to process the data have to be paid for their efforts, so your dismissal of scientists for getting paid seems a bit silly, doesn't it? In reality, scientists might temporarily get more grants if they found something major, but someone else would shoot them down (there's a huge career to made out of it if you can dispr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone has a lot to gain, so I will in fact call anything anyone claims without backing up those claims with any evidence bullshit...
The scientists have provided copious data and arguments backing up their claims. Yet you and others like you continue to call "bullshit". So I ask you: do you have data and arguments to the contrary?
How's this: what would it take to convince you that AGW is real? What reasonable measurement, achievable in the next few years, would you require to believe that the predictions are accurate?
By the way, so far, I see you using works like "hostage" and "silence opposition", which sounds to me more like you're d
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody (well, nobody of significance) denies that we are having an impact on the climate. What is in question is the amount of impact that we are having. The fact of the matter is that we have very little knowledge about the driving forces of the climate. We have so little, that we cannot predi
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually think that this is a good measure at heart. Rather than jumping in on sensationalism, they are saying that basically "We just want to get justifiable evidence before committing any more resources"...
"Justifiable evidence" here being defined as any which supports their preexisting ideological conclusions.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
From a German perspective it sounds a bit weird, I mean, can there be any good argument against greater energy efficiency? Even if there was no climate change, why waste energy?
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Informative)
> can there be any good argument against greater energy efficiency?
Quite possibly, yes, locally.
For example, my water heater (not that old, not that new) is about 85% efficient. It's expected to have a useful life of another 10 years or so. I could get that up to 90% or so by getting a brand-new high-efficiency one. My net energy savings would be on the order of $50 a year at most, which works out to $500 over those ten years. A new water heater costs more than $500.
So the right thing to do in this case is to keep using the old heater for those 10 years. Note that this also avoids the energy use of _producing_ an extra water heater, so it's less of a loss to others than it would appear at first glance. It's clearly a win for me personally.
Now obviously this calculation depends on the price of energy, the price of water heaters, and the efficiency gains to be had. The last of these starts hitting diminishing returns quickly once what you have is anything resembling non-crappy; for example it's hard to reduce your energy usage by 2x if you're already 60% efficient.... Much easier to do if you're 10% efficient, of course.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Energy efficient appliances will require replacement of perfectly good equipment, again costing people money.
This is only valid if you consider the environment to be free, like it has been forever. Put a price tag on the environment and everything changes. But this is inconvenient for many powerful interests.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I pose the question. If our impact did not cause it, are we responsible to fix it? Even if our impact did cause it, what portion of what they are experiencing can be attributed to what we did? And what about the impact of the rest of the world (including those very same third world countries that are going to suffer the effects first, as you put it)? I'm not against sending aid to other countries that need it, but to declare the USA as "responsible", and potentially bankrupt a single country for a global problem, is ignorant at best...
It doesn't matter if the earth's climate is changing because of man or not. If no nations want to act to keep the earth habitable, the money they keep in their economies will mean jack shit when we're extinct. Choosing money over survival is what I call ignorant at best.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Informative)
Here is the list of scientific organizations (national academies of sciences etc) which agree with the theory of global warming: list [wikipedia.org] (Global warming in the sense of: predominantly caused by humans and transforming the environmental conditions on Earth.)
On the other hand, here is the list of scientific organizations which disagree list [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, the latter list is empty. There are a just five organizations which don't make a clear statement [wikipedia.org] supporting all aspects of global warming, but don't oppose it either. There will never be more scientific agreement on any issue. That doesn't prove it's correct - just because it's the overwhelming consensus opinion of the scientific community doesn't mean it's necessarily right, but it's as clear an indication of the scientific opinion as it can possibly be.
If you can't make a decision based on that, you'll not make a decision based on more research.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a blend of government officials and scientists, does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers;
What do you propose to collect independent data from 1950 to 2010? Time travel? Of course you have to rely on global climate researchers.
More to the point, it's not actually true (the IPCC is made up of climate researchers who are asked to participate based on their research on, yes, climate). And who does Utah want researching climate issues, if not climate researchers? Shoe salesmen?
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
"So what the state of Utah is saying is that since no one else is taking this seriously, we shouldn't have to? I agree that it will hurt us economically and competitively with other nations but you have to look at what scientific evidence we have before you mire this in those sorts of things."
You know, I'm not even sure this is true. Even if climate change isn't a real problem then there's still the issue of non-infinite supplies of fossil fuels, and the reliance on dangerous regimes from Venezuela to Russia, to Iran for them.
So regardless of climate change, we're going to need to look at renewables and green technology anyway, and as such I suspect that the market for environmentally friendly, or green technology will actually be quite massive, such that it has the potential to do for that area that embraces it and leads the world on it in the 21st century what IT did for silicon valley did in the 20th century.
Green technology is not going to be a small market, it's going to be a global market, with increasing prominence however you cut it, so on the contrary, those who embrace it, may have short term expendature, but long term it could put their economy up there as one of the richest in the world. There is going to be a lot of money however you cut it.
The choice really comes down to whether you avoid short term research costs, and just follow the rest of the world remaining a non-factor, or whether you invest, and lead the world as California has done for much of the past few decades.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Funny)
A "full and independent investigation" is exactly what the EPA tried to do. Problem is that everyone is on the planet. Good luck finding sentient beings to do an 'independent investigation' of our planet. Anyone else has a stake in this one way or the other because they live here.
Utah is just saying they want us to go back to the moon, and possibly to mars to build a colony to do an independent investigation. I fully support Utah's support of our manned space program, even if they are doing it in a strange manner.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, then. More rain and snow prove global warming. And drought proves global warming. So..... given that any changes in the weather prove global warming, what would disprove global warming?
Heads I win, tails you lose, right?
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
reduction of greenhouse gasses and/or global temperature?
Growing ice-masses instead of shrinking ice masses? Lowering of sea levels?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Anything floating in water will only displace a volume of water equivalent in mass to the object itself. If ice was less dense, it would expand, but it would still displace the same amount of water since more of it will be above the surface. Therefore floating ice doesn't contribute significantly to the sea level.
The sea level rise due to warming is from thermal expansion of the oceans (above 4 C water starts expanding again), and the melting of ice on continental shelves (such as Antarctica and Greenland).
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Informative)
Climate change (and I mean that in the broadest sense, be it global warming or the onset of an ice age) is never a simple "everywhere gets a little bit warmer" or "everywhere gets a little bit dryer". Some places change in one way, some in another. The UK had the coldest January in 25 years, but the global average temperature in January was the highest since records began. Some places will have droughts, some places will have more snow, but it's still impossible to predict with any accuracy what will happen in any one place at any one time. That doesn't mean we should throw in the towel and say "it's impossible to be certain, so lets give up".
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Funny)
But effects that aren't homogeneous and monotonic are hard to understand!
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Insightful)
So why are we trying to implement policies to combat that change?
Well maybe because we've grown to be dependent on the way the climate is today, and a lot of people may end up dying?
Should we try to change the climate so that we can return N. America back to its natural, under ice state? Should we try to return the Earth to it's glorious molten past? Should we try our best to strip the atmosphere of all oxygen so to usher in the return of Methanite bacteria?
No, because none of those are beneficial to humanity today.
We should predict where the climate is heading and spend our resources to adapt to the change instead of trying to stop it!
Who says we shouldn't? Both these methods are worth pursuing. What isn't good is sticking our heads in the sand, and saying "Climate change isn't happening, no one needs do anything!"
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that none of the phenomena you've mentioned actually prove global warming (see definition of straw man argument [wikipedia.org]).
Global warming refers to rising average global temperatures, so the way to disprove global warming would be to show that average global temperatures aren't going up.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Insightful)
If scientists correct for bad monitoring stations, either by throwing the data point out or applying a compensation function for the urban heat island effect, you global warming deniers raise a shitstorm about how the scientists are just making data up.
If scientists present the full, unaltered dataset, you global warming deniers throw the baby out with the bathwater and say that all the data is bad because there are some bad data points.
It appears to me that the real problem is every time researchers try to present evidence for an answer to your question, you move the goal posts.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears to me that the real problem is every time researchers try to present evidence for an answer to your question, you move the goal posts.
No. The problem is that everything they accuse climatologists of -- having an a-priori conclusion they will do anything to support in spite of evidence, fabricating data, neglecting basic logic and the scientific method, deliberately misrepresenting data to skew it in their favor -- are all things the anti-AGW crowd does flagrantly every time the subject comes up.
They have no shame about doing these things themselves, nor do they have any shame about projecting these failings onto climatologists and being outraged about it.
But at the end of the day, the situation is obvious. The group of people who fail at basic scientific rigor are the ones who have no idea what that means and don't want to know.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:5, Interesting)
It would disprove global warming if the planet were not getting warmer. It may seem obvious, but global warming is proven by the fact that the globe is getting warmer. 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. The real question now is the cause of global warming. Despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels are significantly higher than they've ever been since humans first evolved, and most of that CO2 is man-made, there are people who claim that mankind is not having an effect on climate. Still, much of the cause and effect evidence is circumstantial and therefore assailable. And rightly so if you've got alternate hypotheses. But to simply say "nuh-uh!" isn't very scientific.
As for how a warmer atmosphere affects local weather, it WILL both raise and lower precipitation. In cold months you'll get a lot more precipitation coming out of the atmosphere since there's a lot more moisture up there. It snows more near freezing than it does at -20F, so warming air, pumping it with water, then cooling it to just below freezing is a great recipe for snowstorms. But the cool air has to come from somewhere-- thus Alaska's record high temperatures this year and Canada's difficulty getting enough snow for the Winter Olympics. In the summer, though, the already warm air will now be that much warmer, which means it can hold more moisture without raining, meaning that you'll get droughts in tropical areas where there used to be rain. Add to that the devastation that will occur when the glaciers have melted and all that freshwater stops flowing, and we're in for interesting times.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, then. More rain and snow prove global warming. And drought proves global warming. So..... given that any changes in the weather prove global warming, what would disprove global warming?
Heads I win, tails you lose, right?
Sorry, I'm afraid it just IS complicated. Global warming will (we believe) lead to more precipitation in some places at some times of year, and less precipitation in other place at other times of year, on average over many decades. It may also change the "variance" leading to weather with more very wet and very dry years. "Proving" or "disproving" theories about the climate will typically involve a subtle statistical analysis of data over the whole planet and probably over several decades.
Re:I Don't Think This Was Well Thought Out (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest failure yet discovered was the claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would all melt away by 2035 [wattsupwiththat.com].
Yes, I think it is very, very important to note that the biggest failure found in the IPCC paper was a single wrong number on page 493 of Volume 2.
Skeptics are taking minor errors and trying to blow them up to ridiculous proportion. That error about the Himalayan glaciers is trivial. There is a 45 page section on glacial melting in Volume 1 that is entirely correct and well-sourced, and nobody's paying attention to it. They'd rather focus on a single flawed number.
No report of that size is going to be perfect; there are going to be minor typos and flaws. So far only two legitimate errors have been found. [realclimate.org] (The other involves bad data on the Netherlands, which was provided by...wait for it...the government of the Netherlands.)
Maybe we can all agree that the IPCC report is 99.999% correct. Then we can get something done.
I love the double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times have we seen this sort of argument as contained in TFA:
It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a "gravy train" and their efforts would "ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty".
So in other words, they accuse the climate change scientists of of acting in their own financial interests by being alarmists and then also complain about how doing something about the problem will adversely affect the financial interests of the skeptics. It is a massive double standard!
They claim that scientists toe the climate change line to get grants, and yet can you imagine how much definitive proof against man-made climate change would be worth to businesses? Any scientist who was in it for the money could name their price (or at least, their wife could name her price to be a consultant to industry).
The problem with this debate is that one side has to prove their claims, while the other side just needs to create doubt by using unsubstantiated and even sometimes completely discredited claims. In this case, claiming that the other side is on the "gravy train" isn't supported by any evidence at all, and yet there is no way to disprove it either. In all the leaked emails regarding this, where was the shred of evidence that anybody was trying to rort taxpayers money?
Re:I love the double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this debate is that one side has to prove their claims, while the other side just needs to create doubt by using unsubstantiated and even sometimes completely discredited claims. In this case, claiming that the other side is on the "gravy train" isn't supported by any evidence at all, and yet there is no way to disprove it either.
That's exactly my thought as well; and i would even go a bit further:
1/ the greenhouse effect is proven; without the Greenhouse-effect it would be nearly 20C colder on average, and CO2 is one of the gases responsible.
2/ CO2 levels has changed dramatically since the industrial revolution, in fact we can calculate how much CO2 we dump into the atmosphere by looking at the amount of oil and gas sold.
3/ because of (1) and (2), 'NOT AGW' should be proven, because no further warming would mean a strange cut-off point for the greenhouse effect of CO2, and that would mean we need an extraordinary explanation for 'NOT-AGW'.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They claim that scientists toe the climate change line to get grants,
I'm sorry, but isn't the main argument against AGW "skeptics" that they are all working for "big oil"? And now you are claiming that it's wrong to consider the financial interests of the scientists receiving government paid grants to produce "science" that will ultimately give government more power.
It is a massive double standard!
I couldn't have said it better!
Re:I love the double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
I posted the following comment recently, but I think it is germane to this discussion at hand:
I am noticing in many of the posts here a distinct lack of intellectual rigor. A friend of mine is an engineering professor, and he notices this amongst his students too. Specifically, many of his students have an attitude where they feel they can question any scientific theory. Fine you might say. After all, isn't it good to be skeptical? Well yes, perhaps. But when he asks these students specifically why they doubt a particular theory, they can't make a logical argument to support their position. They just say it doesn't intuitively seem right. It is almost as if they don't really comprehend the reasons for their opinions. And this is amongst elite engineering students.
If I could venture my own opinion on this, I think that relativistic values (and I don't mean Einstein) have seeped into much of our educational system, and by extension to society at large. This relativistic world is a place where there is no real truth, where all opinions are relative to the self and are essentially given equal value. In such a world, taken to its extreme, there are no facts, only opinions. Everything is relative.
On the left, we see university professors pontificating from institutions founded on Greek principles of Truth and Freedom of Inquiry that these Greek principles are merely just another cultural view in their relativistic universe. And from the right, we see religious leaders cavalierly rejecting the search for Truth through rational inquiry and observation, preferring to create their own "Truth" as revealed in the bible. What both of these extremes are forgetting is that this country was founded on Greek principles of Truth and Freedom of Inquiry, that in the founders' minds, the Greeks were a primary inspiration. Separation of Church and State; Science; Universities where Truth is the primary virtue; the ideals of Justice; a three class society, in which the Middle Class (the Polis) forms the backbone of society; Democracy. These were ALL Greek values and ideals. And has been these Greek ideals that have made our country great.
If you don't believe this, I suggest you read some Greek literature. Plato. Aristotle. Aristophanes. Sophocles. In Greek literature you will find commentary on many of the most important issues our society faces. The Greeks even wrote about cultural relativism. I believe we are sorely in need of a rediscovery of Greek wisdom.
And here is my main point. I believe that many in our society are abandoning the Greek values that have made our civilization great. Values such as searching for Truth for Truth's sake through rational inquiry and logic. Skills such as rigorous logic applied in rational debate. In our modern technological society it often seems that Truth should only be pursued for material gain, for profit and not simply because it is noble to pursue the truth. Thus it is easy for business executives to ignore inconvenient facts if those facts might interfere with profit margins. And it is easy for religious followers to adopt truths that make them feel more comfortable with their chosen worldview. After all, if all Truth is relative, then why not pick an easy and comfortable Truth.
Re:I love the double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt this is part of the problem. But consider what might have caused the systemic decay of our media system. It used to be that those who graduated from university were schooled in Greek and/or Roman literature and philosophy. Through this, ideally they gained a sense of ethics and a clear view of the principles that make western democracies thrive. Such education would give students an understanding of history, of logic and region, of life. In many ways, these educated citizens were important leaders in society.
Over the last three decades, classical education has largely disappeared from universities. Universities have shifted emphasis to the social sciences, to economics, to technology. Education has increasingly had to give utilitarian justification for its existence. The social sciences, which seem to look at society from the outside perspective of alien observers, have spread views of cultural relativism. Fields such as economics are largely valueless attempts to maximize "economic activity" (the assumption that increased economic activity will improve human well being is implicit, but I believe this connection is dubious).
As a result of this, I would argue that the educated elite in our society have lost a sense of the roots of western civilization. Our elites are increasingly technocratic, tweaking knobs and dials with little appreciation of the big picture of our civilization (I am referring to the elites on both the "left" and the "right"). Our elites seem to fall under the spell of faddish and simplistic ideologies. On the right, the dominant ideology is centred around the idea that selfishness on the part of all units of society will maximize economic activity. The Greeks would have said that selfishness is a negative quality, that when people act selfishly, it encourages the worst aspects of human nature. So much for that wisdom today.
These oblivious elites have allowed or encouraged the development of media monopolies. They don't seem to understand the ultimate consequences of their policies. They don't seem to understand that free and open discussion is the lifeblood of our society, socially, politically, AND economically.
Re:I love the double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems daft to me to claim that the whole thing is a hoax to get funding. All science is funded somehow, and yet this insult is only thrown at the people working on climate.
In my experience (I'm a working scientist, though not in climate), science is very, very competitive. Just brutal, in fact. It's full of mildly Aspergers people who delight in other's discomfort and are convinced (almost) all other researchers are idiots. If you have a clever idea that cuts your rival's work off at the knees, by God, you're going to publish, and you're going to rub their face in it as you do.
I find it impossible to believe that good anti-AWG ideas really have been suppressed for 50 years or however long it is.
Re:I love the double standards (Score:5, Insightful)
As a fellow scientist, I'd like to second these remarks. (Well, perhaps you're being a bit too harsh on the social skills of most scientists.) We're competitive as hell. Grants are awarded not just based on previous results, but reputation. And we all know that if we lie, we'll get caught. Someone will eventually look at the data and realize we fudged something. When that happens (and it's usually pretty soon, especially for such a hot issue as AGW), you're reputation will be in tatters and, if you lied, you'll lose your job. You won't get grant money and you'll have to find a new career.
Meanwhile, the various industries that are fighting the environmental movement have their own researchers who would leap on any clear problems in the climate studies. So saying that this is a conspiracy is like believing the Moon landings were a hoax, in spite of the fact the the Soviets even signed off on them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument seems to be centered around the motivations of the people supporting climate change, and how much money they stand to make from selling carbon credits.
By this same logic, you should be looking pretty harshly at critics of climate change, and where their funding comes from.
From where I sit, the critics of climate change have a lot more to gain financially from denying.
Uh...what? (Score:5, Insightful)
urging the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs
Um...whether you think global warming is bullshit or not, why would you want to halt carbon dioxide reduction policies? I mean, modify them, sure...but why completely halt them? Global warming being real or not, there is no denying that we as a species pump way too much crap into our atmosphere. Regardless of how much this affects our planet, you can't honestly tell me that it's a GOOD thing...
People always seem to follow one extreme ("We're ruining our planet!") or the other ("We aren't doing anything to the planet!") when it comes to global warming. What's up with that? Why is it so hard to find people with a realistic point of view ("We pollute too much, but we aren't dooming ourselves.")
Re:Uh...what? (Score:5, Insightful)
That one is obvious, and in the article. The carbon dioxide reduction policies are a economic threat to Utah. They produce the coal for the power plants that the carbon dioxide reduction policies are trying to eliminate.
Nothing much to see here, just a legislature passing a "Don't take our juuurbs!" statement.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
See, that's the part that confuses me...sure, there are a ton of coal miners and whatnot that rely on those places being up and running...but if that power plant gets shut down and disassembled and/or if a new power plant gets built that utilizes a different type of energy, workers will be needed to do both of those jobs.
Who better than the coal miners? They already work in an extremely hazerdous environment, switching them from miners to construction workers is just a few weeks worth of training away.
Re: (Score:2)
Union BS, mostly.
Not that I'm entirely against unions as a concept (and being from where I'm from we're practically brought up being shown what business will do to people without law or organized labor restraining them, heck that's a decent bit of the state history class we all took in middle school). What unions became over time in the US however is an entirely different beast.
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That I 100% agree with. The true purpose of a union makes complete sense...but, like communism, an idea on paper becomes very different once you mix in realistic (and basic) human nature.
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What they fail to see is that the whole climate emission reduction actually IS a "don't take ur juuuuubs" agenda. Especially the way it's pushed globally.
We spent the better part of our industrial revolution years polluting. Our whole wealth is built on waste and pollution. Now we have the wealth to actually enact energy conservation technology (and we also have the patents to keep others from doing the same), so passing a global resolution to reduce pollution and forcing every country to follow suit (which
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Utah's Lawmakers are cheap, corrupt beings. Here [ksl.com] is a story about a legislator pusing for a nuclear power plant that he has a direct stake in. Hell, they even built an Office in the Capitol building for Lobbyists [sltrib.com].
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I deny that as a species we pump way too much crap into our atmosphere.
Good heavens. As it turns out, you were incorrect. There is denying of it. I wonder what else you're wrong about.
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Even if global warming is absolutely false in every way, having more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does nothing positive for our air quality. Whether we're warm (or underwater) or not doesn't make a difference if we're having trouble breathing. Air quality is already an issue for many asthmatics, and it will be moreso in the future.
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Exactly. I am of the opinion that while we aren't dooming ourselves, we are still causing harm based on the amount of pollution we create. We aren't going to cause a catastrophic failure of the planet, but we certainly aren't making it a healthy place to live.
Utah Finds Chlorofluorocarbons Completely at Fault (Score:2)
Um...whether you think global warming is bullshit or not, why would you want to halt carbon dioxide reduction policies? I mean, modify them, sure...but why completely halt them? Global warming being real or not, there is no denying that we as a species pump way too much crap into our atmosphere. Regardless of how much this affects our planet, you can't honestly tell me that it's a GOOD thing...
According to the resolution itself (I don't agree with this in anyway) they seem to place all the blame of climate change on Chlorofluorocarbons and are convinced that CO2 has historically been naturally present and part of the circle of life and therefore it's not so bad:
WHEREAS, there is a statistically more direct correlation between twentieth century temperature rise and Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere than CO2; WHEREAS, outlawed and largely phased out by 1978, in the year 2000 CFC's began to decline at approximately the same time as global temperatures began to decline;
So your proposition in a reduction of CO2 is irrelevant because they find that CFCs are sole contributing factor (seemingly ignoring 'green house gas' family of pollutants).
They didn't claim CO2 is a "GOOD thing" as you put it but the
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So your proposition in a reduction of CO2 is irrelevant because they find that CFCs are sole contributing factor (seemingly ignoring 'green house gas' family of pollutants).
They didn't claim CO2 is a "GOOD thing" as you put it but they say it's nothing to scale back our economy for. To reiterate, I don't agree with this, I'm just telling you of one of the routes they came to the conclusion that CO2 reduction programs should be abolished.
Sorry, I should have been less specific...I just meant why give up on scaling back our pollution in general. Thanks for the clarification though!
Re:Uh...what? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a growing number of people who believe that aiming solely for fast large cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is not an economically wise decision and it's better to mix less ambitious goals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions with engineering approaches to try and reduce global warming.
That said, reducing CO2 emissions does have some interesting side-effects such as reducing dependency on Oil and Gas.
Consider a world where there is no need to pay trillions of dollars to some far away countries whose only claim to greatness is lots of hydrocarbons and the subsidizing of madrassas in other countries to spread a particularly extremist and violent form of Islam, or spend trillions of dollars on wars to protect them. Not to mention that Oil and Gas keep some pretty nasty dictatorships in power.
In such a world, if China does not follow other countries into a low-carbon economy, they will be the sending trillions to those countries and paying for wars in faraway places ...
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In such a world, if China does not follow other countries into a low-carbon economy, they will be the sending trillions to those countries and paying for wars in faraway places ...
...which kinda wouldn't matter. Let's step back and really look at that scenario.
OK, so say China starts paying trillions to those middle-eastern nations. What are those middle eastern nations going to do to us? Even with the proper money, they don't have the natural resources to run their own war factories, and would instead rely heavily on buying or trading large amounts of hardware from other countries.
Considering their own countries are not much more than huge deserts with a few cities here and there
Re:Uh...what? (Score:4, Insightful)
CO2 is plant food, not pollution, and in ages past there were FAR higher levels of it in the atmosphere. Should we continue to strive to reduce all industrial emmissions? Of course we should. Should CO2 be high on the list? Not even close.
Re:Uh...what? (Score:4, Insightful)
and in ages past there were FAR higher levels of it in the atmosphere
Oh, you mean that age where giant reptiles ruled the planet and humans were nowhere to be found? Use some common sense, you git. By your logic, an ice age wouldn't matter because hey! it's happend in the past.
That being said, I agree CO2 shouldn't necessarily top the list, but it still needs attention. We are at a point where (in my opinion) global warming isn't man-made, but it will eventually become man-accelerated...which is something we can easily prevent, at least at this point.
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True, but here in 2010 we are at a crossroads. Either we start making changes to our overall structure now and put serious effort in actively reducing the amount of pollution we generate, or we say fuck it and run the planet into the ground. If we decide to say fuck it, we will be fine for a while. Things won't get real bad for decades, possibly centuries...but it will eventually happen.
As usual, politics gets in the way...I agree that the amount of focus put on CO2 is mostly political in nature. That b
Re:Uh...what? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are serious concerns about the IPCC and some of their faulty results but the people mentioned in this article are neither competent nor willing to address them. Just bark with them or against them, do not try to have articulate discussion.
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Re:So if man makes 29 gigatons or so of CO2 per ye (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming for a moment you did not take those numbers out of your posterior, nature before the industrial revolution was at equilibrium, meaning it pumped out 600 and pumped back in 600 (e.g. plant growth). Then, human activities with 29 Gtons would tip that balance and accumulate CO2 in the atmosphere, which cannot be absorbed by nature (whose capacity is 600, not 629).
Ultimately, it is because an inordinate amount of carbon was extracted from the earth as coal and oil, way faster that the geological scale that would have occurred in nature.
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Nature is not and has never been in equilibrium. The world is constantly changing.
At a vastly slower rate than with human intervention. Sea life can adjust for a 2 degree temperature swing over a few thousand years. In a hundred? Not so much.
Another fact that you conveniently leave out is that large, natural swings in climate tend to result in mass extinctions.
Candidates for the Canute Award (Score:2)
I'm sure that they can deny the existence of global warming. I'm also equally sure that global warming is not worried about their denial. They might as well have tried to legislate about the ratio between the diameter of a circle and its circumference. But seriously, what are the consequences of this vote? Well, apart from making the Utah state legislature look silly.
Falling behind a little more each day. (Score:2, Insightful)
Each day, the United States falls behind a little bit more.
Cutting-edge research these days happens in Europe and Asia, where religion is put in its place, and education is paramount. Even if global warming is a political sham and most of the "scientific" evidence has been fabricated, as it very well may be, at least it has spurned research into solar and wind technologies, for instance.
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America got the Religious Nuts.
Australia got the Criminals.
Sadly they got the better end of the bargain.
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Of course. When was the last time you heard someone described as a religious mastermind?
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Huzza for legislation over science! (Score:5, Insightful)
While the science around climate change deserves scrutiny and probing, this probing should probably be done by scientists, not legislators. The last time I checked, the scientific method didn't include debate, Robert's Rules of Order or passage by majority. Freeman Dyson makes some interesting points against climate change in this NY Times Article [nytimes.com]. If you agree with him or not, at least he's engaging in scentific skepticism over uninformed legislation.
Obviously the majority of Utah's Assembly has no idea how science works, as it takes a majority to pass an obviously useless law. It's too bad that method doesn't work or the Utah State Assembly could go ahead and legislate the Higgs-Boson into existence right there in the chambers. I think this problem is a symptom of our terrible science education in our schools. Perhaps they could go ahead and legislate some scientific thinking into themselves while they're redefining physics.
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the scientific method didn't include debate, Robert's Rules of Order or passage by majority
A rose by any other name.... [wikipedia.org]
Interesting data from Prague for last 200 years (Score:2, Interesting)
Here [www.chmi.cz]
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Well it's very pretty, but what about it do you find interesting?
This is what you get.... (Score:4, Insightful)
....for carrying out questionable science.
The effect of the recent IPCC Glacier mis-statements and the University of East Anglia 'mistakes' is to give people who would 'like it to not be so' to have a grain of sand around which to crystallize.
I make no claim as to if climate change is upon us or not, but it is ESSENTIAL that the science is revisited and made rock solid (or completely disproven)....in the meantime we have to progress on a path of caution -- which effectively means continuing to reduce carbon emissions IN CASE they are causing the problem...putting our collective fingers in our ears and singing la-lala-la isn't going to solve anything.
Jeez, politicians have enough difficulty making sensible decisions already, we're not exactly helping by not giving them accurate information on which to make those decisions, are we???
Amendments say it all. (Score:4, Insightful)
For those of you too occupied to RTFA, the crossed out terms are enlightening: 'conspiracy' (twice), 'flawed', 'tricks', 'gravy train'.
Such emotive language doesn't help their cause when opponents could just as easily frame "denialists" with such terms.
Utah??? Time to rethink my stance (Score:2)
Dammit... my tendency to be skeptical of the Chicken Little antics of the Warmers is in direct contradiction with my rule to distrust the actions of religious nut jobs.
What to do?
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
My counter-resolution (Score:5, Informative)
And WHEREAS the questionability of the said data has been questioned (and debunked thoroughly) and
WHEREAS using 12 years of data is a flaw in itself, especially given that 1998 was an El-Nino year, and WHEREAS the last decade was the hottest on record in any case and
WHEREAS that old-wives' tale was debunked recently and
WHEREAS that was one study that actually used flawed data and didn't even bother to speculate on the physics of how CFCs could affect temperatures in the first place and
WHEREAS said decline in temperatures was addressed above and
WHEREAS a committee appointed for that purpose found no evidence against one researcher, none of the charges against the other researchers was ever proven, and effort involved in faking such a massive amount of data would make it impossible in any case and
WHEREAS the paper under consideration was published by lowering the standards of a peer reviewed journal so that it would get in and several editors resigned from that journal for that reason and
WHEREAS this clause only lays down the fact which is unquestioned and was the original purpose of IPCC and
WHEREAS the rate of change is what matters in the first place, and the existence of a "Little Ice Age" has yet to be proven globally and
WHEREAS that one is simply a strawman argument and
At least it wasn't Texas this time (Score:3, Funny)
The Utah State Assembly knows best... (Score:3, Insightful)
Leave it to the politicians to 'prove a negative' simply by virtue of not understanding the subject matter completely. Which begs the question, should we then have a 'licensing system' to 'steer the Government', similar to driving a car? One that requires the comprehension of things like the laws of physics? Oh wait, never mind, the Government would be responsible for administering that program too...
Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:5, Funny)
Down here in Texas we don't use no high falutin' government assemblage, we use horse sense. The horses tell us it's cold out, so there can't be no climate change.
Damn liberal elitists.
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That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
People have trouble comprehending anything that takes longer than 20 years to prove, that's the problem. Innate flaw in our psychological makeup.
Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
You do realize you're just making that up? And that if the past 15 years showed marginally significant warming you'd be trumpeting it as "proof" that GW/CC was a "fact"? This is what bugs scientists about the AGW crowd: you use quite different standards for confirming and disconfirming evidence. The anti-AGW crowd do the same thing. I've been on both sides of the fence as I've learned more about the evidence, and neither is a particularly comfortable place for a scientist, as one gets continually pushed by anti-scientific individuals who introduce absolute irrelevancies, like the dangers to the ecology or the economy if their preferred belief happens to be true.
One useful way of determining you are dealing the an anti-scientist is that they mix introduce claims about the effects of GW/CC (or carbon dioxide reduction policies) as if they were arguments for or against GW/CC. As soon as someone does that, you know they aren't interested in science, but in politics and power.
With regard to Phil Jones' statement: an estimated rate of 0.13 C per decade [noaa.gov] would lead one to expect 0.2 C in 15 years. Instead, the rate is statistically equivalent to zero. That's interesting, but a more interesting question is: what is the highest rate that the observed trend is consistent with?
If it is higher than 0.13 C then the models are not in trouble. If it is not, then the models are.
But you cannot say at the same time that an observed rate that is consistent with the models over 15 years is confirmatory, and that an observed rate that is inconsistent with the models over 15 years is not disconfirmatory.
Not if you care about science, anyway.
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Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
I think you said that poorly.
There is no sharp cut-off as to the interval size you need to be able to achieve significance. Furthermore, the *meaning* of significance is confusing when we talk about a single interval's importance in falsifying a hypothesis about the distribution of a random variable (global average temperatures)
Imagine we play a game of coin toss with a coin I provide. I take heads, you take tails. We play four rounds, and heads comes up every time. You, naturally, suspect I'm cheatin
Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:5, Informative)
No, some of us just remember the same crap in the 70s about how the world would be in a new ice age by now.
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate [sciencemag.org] is the only peer reviewed paper I am aware of that said anything about an ice age. So that makes 1 paper for GC and thousands of papers for GW. Are you aware of any other peer reviewed papers supporting GC? I don't have access to the articles that cite this one to see if they make the same kind of claims, however the abstracts do not.
We also remember very good science being ripped up because the data was falsefied or poorly collected.
Extraordinary statements require extraordinary proof. I am curious as to what you are attempting to reference.
When you're a sheep, I don't respect your opinion.
Insulting your readers is truly the sign of a towering intellect.
Skeptics I have time for. Convince a skeptic, and you'll have won an actual battle.
Consider me skeptical.
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Everyone has ulterior motives.
The people doing the Global Warming science are based in universities and want to continue to receive funding.
The people doing anti-Global Warming work are based in Energy companies and want to continue to make record profits.
Which one do you think is more likely to color your results?
Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:5, Informative)
I did find an interesting study of the papers written by climate scientists between 1965 and 1979. Seven articles written in that time frame predicted global cooling, forty four predicted global warming and twenty were neutral. It seems the media at the time, not the scientists, were predicting a new ice age.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/03/the-global-cooling-mole/ [realclimate.org]
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That's because they're in VANCOUVER. Vancouver sees on average MAYBE a bit more snow than Seattle, on their lucky years. Only an idiot would host the winter games in Seattle and expect plenty of snow, but because you've crossed the border into Canadia they magically expect Vancouver to be covered in the white shit.
Re:I love to be the first to say this... (Score:4, Funny)
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major state, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must deny climate change! The defense rests.
Occams razor... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's more that Utah is sitting on a whole metric assload of coal [utah.gov].
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It kinda confirms (one of) my worst fears about the human race, namely that it sees the laws of reality as something political, right up into the echelons of power.
I've mentioned it before on /., but I was once on an international standardisation committee on which somebody questioned the statement that pure Poisson processes were ergodic. Rather than get somebody to check a textbook or do some maths, the (American) chair demanded that it be put to a vote. At least some Americans seem to be so devoted to democracy that it has become a religion, and they can't cope with the idea that reality might not be democratically decided.
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Apparently neither did the committee, but it didn't stop them having an opinion about it.
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NO SHIT, THE CLIMATE CHANGES.
So what's it doing now, eh? What's the climate going to be like in 50 years? 100 years? 200 years? How can we affect that? How are we already affecting it? That's the question, innit? "Climate change" as an issue refers more to "what factor does man's activities play", than "Hey, it's warmer this century than last". Man's activities being of particular interest because it is the factor in climate that we can change. If you'll pardon the expression, stating the obvious, "the climate changes" merely
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Of course, the vast majority of scientists are trying to deceive us. The oil companies are right, but they don't have enough money to fight the global coalition of evil scientists. We all know environmentalists are extremely wealthy and they will buy the scientific community to say whatever fits their evil, hidden agenda. Of course, nobody knows what's this "agenda" we're talking about but that doesn't matter. It's evil.
The poor oil companies don't have a chance.
Re:Utah matters? (Score:4, Funny)
I say we let Texas invade Utah, then let them both secede.
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I'm especially impressed that they think the climate or some other force of nature cares for their laws. I dunno, isn't Utah that state with a sizable population in the religious corner of the map of the human mind? Maybe they think that if God's people pass a law the planet has to adhere?
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I think there's an awful lot of people in that middle ground where you are. Like you I don't doubt the science, and I think people who claim "oh, look at all the snow, it's cold, you lie" are being willfully deliberately ignorant (deliberately stupid people are the people I most loathe). So the impact vs. conservation discussion is really where people should be choosing to take a stand (or not.)
So I see it as a bunch of personal decisions. Here are some of mine: