scary new changes in the earth's eco-system

[TheNiche]

In my view, it is futile to debate this or pontificate that climate scientists are wrong about this. They are the experts; they have advanced degrees in the matter, and have been studying this problem for decades.

Fallacy: Appeal to Authority.

[BryanS]

Fallacy: Appeal to Authority.

...no... always appeal, always inquire, always question, always get second opinions. In this case, the consensus (i.e. multiple converging fact-based assessments) are in. When 9 out of 10 doctors tell you that you have a problem... you need to deal with that reality. You could go with that 1 doctor that may have a radically different opinion, but, all things considered, you've done your due diligence. We need to get beyond the question whether or not we have a problem, and start thinking about options (which could range from doing nothing because it is too late, to others)...

[Subdude]

if you consider someone who claims to have invented the internet when they didn't a good spokeperson, so be it. i think others would disagree.

Jax take a deep breath. he didn't invent the internet.

i was able to access the internet in the 80's via a modem. friends also were able to access the net. now if you're talking the 60's, then i can see how it wasn't accessible by the average person.

Not that Al Gore and the internet have much to do with the topic at hand to begin with. Regardless of one's beliefs on the issue, trying to debate the issues of climate change by debating the merits of Al Gore seems more than a bit silly.

Fallacy: Appeal to Authority.

Better to appeal to nitwits? Why be a slave to common sense?

[Jax]

I started out not debating climate change, but trying to point people in the right direction (towards scientists) when trying to explain a seemingly mysterious phenomenon (a cold winter in China).

Somebody asked "how will Al Gore explain the climate anomaly in China". My point is that scientists will attempt to explain the climate anomaly, and Gore may present the results at some point, but Gore isn't really the one to ask. He's a spokesperson not a scientist. Besides, by asking Gore, you get more caught up in politics than you do by looking for answers from the scientists.

If I could find an answer from NASA or from somebody at Rice, I would feel more comfortable with it than if it came from a politician or spokesperson (nothing against Gore though).

Edited February 5, 2008 by Jax

[TheNiche]

...no... always appeal, always inquire, always question, always get second opinions.

It is insufficient to question. It is insufficient to trust. The only appropriate approach is to reason.

Both sides of the GW issue can construct very compelling arguments for their causes. And both sides have a strong tendency to clutter up their arguments with fallacies. If they do not realize that they commit fallacies, then I do not trust them because their powers of reasoning are very clearly lacking. If they do realize the fallacies as they commit them, then I do not trust them because they are attempting to mislead people by anything other than reasoned argument.

In either case, an uncluttered and minimalist approach to scientific argument is called for, IMO. I don't think that that is possible where GW is concerned, unfortunately.

[jgriff]

Just a reminder... We've been through all this before. Everyone though "all" the scientist agreed. They were "all" wrong back then also.

Ice Age is coming

[Jax]

Just a reminder... We've been through all this before. Everyone though "all" the scientist agreed. They were "all" wrong back then also.

Ice Age is coming

You're right, we already went over that. One article in Time Magazine in the 70s is not the same as thousands of peer reviewed articles in scientific journals on global warming. Time isn't even a good scientific resource. How many articles did you find on this ice age in Nature or Science?

And what do you mean by "all" the scientists agreed? How many scientists are we talking about here? Two?

It even says in the aritlce you posted:

Some scientists like Donald Oilman, chief of the National Weather Service's long-range-prediction group, think that the cooling trend may be only temporary. But all agree that vastly more information is needed about the major influences on the earth's climate.

It doesn't really sound like "all" of the scientists agreed that the earth was cooling. They simply agreed that they needed to study the earth's climate more.

Did you even read that article you posted?

Edited February 5, 2008 by Jax

[crunchtastic]

It is insufficient to question. It is insufficient to trust. The only appropriate approach is to reason.

The human condition must frustrate you to no end.

People who reason are hired help, employed by other people, who's motivation is profit, and humans are not universally served by rising profits. Ugly little business, that. There are two kinds of humans: customers, and collateral damage.

[Mark F. Barnes]

If I could find an answer from NASA or from somebody at Rice, I would feel more comfortable with it than if it came from a politician or spokesperson (nothing against Gore though).

Give this a read since you are so big on NASA.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/...0201167312.html

[Mark F. Barnes]

Take another gander at this also, it brought up some good points.

Link to 20/20 Episode Summary

[TheNiche]

The human condition must frustrate you to no end.

People who reason are hired help, employed by other people, who's motivation is profit, and humans are not universally served by rising profits. Ugly little business, that. There are two kinds of humans: customers, and collateral damage.

Huh?

[jgriff]

It doesn't really sound like "all" of the scientists agreed that the earth was cooling. They simply agreed that they needed to study the earth's climate more.

Did you even read that article you posted?

Yes Jax, I read it and I was there in the 70s also. You're not old enough to have been around when all the grade school kids were being scared to death by "scientists" telling us that we were going to grow up with ice sheets covering North America. It was a lot more than this one article. I remeber reading a science fiction book as a kid that had chapters that took place in an ice age. I was so convinced that we were heading for an ice age that I though that when I grew up I'd be living like the people in the book. I was taught all this stuff in school as fact. People were saying the exact same thing they are now only it was global cooling instead of global warming. Remember, this was only 30 years ago.

I don't care if you beleive in global warming or not, I'm just saying that the "accepted consensus" has been wrong in human history almost as often as it has been right. Can you deny that Jax? Is there a chance that this so called majority of scientists could be wrong?

Edited February 5, 2008 by jgriff

[TheNiche]

I don't care if you beleive in global warming or not, I'm just saying that the "accepted consensus" has been wrong in human history almost as often as it has been right. Can you deny that Jax? Is there a chance that this so called majority of scientists could be wrong?

There is something to this. How many times has politics or religion usurped reason in human history?

[CDeb]

Enough of this NONSENSE! The science is settled!!

Just ask Galileo.

[jgriff]

There is something to this. How many times has politics or religion usurped reason in human history?

Everytime?

[BryanS]

It is insufficient to question. It is insufficient to trust. The only appropriate approach is to reason.

Both sides of the GW issue can construct very compelling arguments for their causes. And both sides have a strong tendency to clutter up their arguments with fallacies. If they do not realize that they commit fallacies, then I do not trust them because their powers of reasoning are very clearly lacking. If they do realize the fallacies as they commit them, then I do not trust them because they are attempting to mislead people by anything other than reasoned argument.

In either case, an uncluttered and minimalist approach to scientific argument is called for, IMO. I don't think that that is possible where GW is concerned, unfortunately.

The educated consensus is there, and in part of reaching that consensus was an "uncluttered and minimalist evaluation" of the basic facts - that's how credible scientists work (and they did get a Nobel prize, so they must at least be on to something). The data does not lie. It is what it is. There were compelling "reasoned" arguments, both sides... many, many years ago... but that was then. This is now... and the evidence is overwhelming: we have a real problem on our hands. Time for argument is over. To think otherwise is to think the Earth is flat at this point, given the information we know. We need to accept reality and move on to the next phase of dealing (or not dealing) with this problem. I don't know what its going to take to convince skeptics... maybe a foot of water in your living room? ...oh wait... that's already happened to us...

[Jax]

It was a lot more than this one article.

How much is a lot more. Quantify it. Was it two or three article? There may have been more than one, but I am sure it was not on the order of hundreds or thousands of articles.

OK I found a website and this guy tries to collect all of the articles he can find in scientific literature (so this list does not include sources like newspapers or Time Magazine) which mention global cooling. He also annotates his list with a description of each article.

http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

So it looks like we're talking about 10s of articles in the 1970s which mention global cooling (keep in mind that some of these articles mention it briefly). Compare this with the magnitude of research being done presently on global warming and it's not very significant. This is probably comparable to the number of papers published per month on global warming, if not less.

I am still not convinced that "Everyone though "all" the scientist agreed." and that "They were "all" wrong back then also", or that this has anything to do with our current situation.



The Galileo argument doesn't mean much in this situation. Galileo had to deal with the church, and it's view of the universe which makes it a totally different situation. It wasn't like the church had empirical evidence which Gallileo had to argue against.

Edited February 5, 2008 by Jax

[TJones]

The science is in. Global warming is real. And we are a part of the problem. If you look back through the history of warming/cooling (ice age) cycles of the earth, you'll see that our "heating period" over the past 100 years, in terms of CO2 emissions, is higher than at any other point in the history of the world, escalating in an exponential, off-the-chart, escape velocity fashion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

Since the Industrial Revolution, circa 1800, the burning of fossil fuels has caused a dramatic increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, reaching levels unprecedented in the last 400 thousand years. This increase has been implicated as a primary cause of global warming.

Ok Bryan, I know you're new here so I will cut you some slack. BUT, If at all possible, please refrain from quoting or linking ANYTHING in the wikipedia files. It is kind of an unwritten rule of HAIF. We just don't do it, especially if we can find a better source, i.e. published papers written by actual scientists, not wikihounds. I have been guilty of it myself, but as a last resort, or when I am being lazy. Just a reminder to the kids from your Uncle Troy. I do like some of the stuff you have been saying on your own though.

Here, our very own U.S. Senate weighed in on it AGAIN. They had to make a NEW report about Global Warming because of so many "skeptics".

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...ty.SenateReport

Edited February 5, 2008 by TJones

[houstonmacbro]

Yeah, most professors do not even accept Wiki information as references.

[TheNiche]

The educated consensus is there, and in part of reaching that consensus was an "uncluttered and minimalist evaluation" of the basic facts - that's how credible scientists work (and they did get a Nobel prize, so they must at least be on to something). The data does not lie. It is what it is. There were compelling "reasoned" arguments, both sides... many, many years ago... but that was then. This is now... and the evidence is overwhelming: we have a real problem on our hands. Time for argument is over. To think otherwise is to think the Earth is flat at this point, given the information we know. We need to accept reality and move on to the next phase of dealing (or not dealing) with this problem. I don't know what its going to take to convince skeptics... maybe a foot of water in your living room? ...oh wait... that's already happened to us...

You're right. The data doesn't lie. People interpreting it very well may, however. Or they might just be very stupid; you can't discount that as a distinct possibility.

But then, the above was my point. You can't rely on self-proclaimed experts--or for that matter laymen that proclaim certain people to be experts based upon qualifications (i.e. Nobel Prize) that aren't necessarily understood by the laymen.

By the way, a true scientist will never use the phrase, "Time for argument is over," as you just did.

[BryanS]

Ok Bryan, I know you're new here so I will cut you some slack. BUT, If at all possible, please refrain from quoting or linking ANYTHING in the wikipedia files.

...fair enough... Can we use Canadian links? or is there a rule against that, too? =) (...I get your point...)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1236

...this article discusses this new Senate report... and offers two view points. I side with James Wang, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Environmental Defense.

Climate change denier and U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) published a report just before Christmas with the headline:

[BryanS]

You're right. The data doesn't lie. People interpreting it very well may, however. Or they might just be very stupid; you can't discount that as a distinct possibility.

But then, the above was my point. You can't rely on self-proclaimed experts--or for that matter laymen that proclaim certain people to be experts based upon qualifications (i.e. Nobel Prize) that aren't necessarily understood by the laymen.

By the way, a true scientist will never use the phrase, "Time for argument is over," as you just did.

I don't think they are stupid. These people have PhD's and years of experience, in their fields. They are qualified, IMO.

...and my point... as a laymen, you rely on experts every day. Doctors that take care of you when you are sick, pilots that fly you from point A to B, etc. You don't understand (nor need to understand) the ins-and-outs of their profession - but they are the experts and you have to trust them, to a greater extent, that they are doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Same is true with credible climate scientists, not those 400 whack jobs in the Senate report, that are telling us, we have a problem, and this (impartial data) is what we based our peer reviewed conclusions on.

...and I'll give you the last one... I got a little carried away. That's not hard to do here...

[TJones]

Bottomline Bryan, if the reports and scientific evidence were so conclusive and to be so compelling that the scientists who claim that global warming is a real threat were right, then why would they need ANYMORE money from the government to foster their grants to keep looking for further so-called "proof" ? Haven't they proven their hypothesies(sp), shouldn't their work be done ? Apparently not, they always need more "funding", and as long as they keep saying "The sky is falling!" they will keep getting it. Your GW scientists are no different than those you claim to be in "big oil's" pocket, they just have you and me, and the rest of the American taxpayers footing their bills. There is BIG MONEY in Global Warming, don't be fooled, just ask Algore.

Edited February 7, 2008 by TJones

[musicman]

There is BIG MONEY is Global Warming, don't be fooled, just ask Algore.

AL GORE SPOKESMAN!!

[TheNiche]

I don't think they are stupid. These people have PhD's and years of experience, in their fields. They are qualified, IMO.

...and my point... as a laymen, you rely on experts every day. Doctors that take care of you when you are sick, pilots that fly you from point A to B, etc. You don't understand (nor need to understand) the ins-and-outs of their profession - but they are the experts and you have to trust them, to a greater extent, that they are doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Same is true with credible climate scientists, not those 400 whack jobs in the Senate report, that are telling us, we have a problem, and this (impartial data) is what we based our peer reviewed conclusions on.

There are 'qualified' people on both sides, if having a Ph.D. and experience are the only measure. But I had a few 'qualified' crackpots as full or associate professors when I was in college, many of them with lengthy and impressive biographies. One insisted that his wife give birth to a child without the use of painkillers, because of course the only moral way to give birth is in writhing pain. Another one insisted in 2004 that Hillary Clinton, once elected to the presidency in 2008, would usher in the Second American Revolution. One of the above was a believer in GW and an advocate of even the most poorly conceived legislation, and the other didn't believe in GW, and even if he were, he suggested that GW could be beneficial to humanity and that we then ought to seek ways to hasten the process.

Physicians and pilots are highly skilled. They are put through rigorous hands-on training and are subjected to plenty of case studies on things that can go wrong. The situations for which they are trained have often been documented hundreds of times over given all forms of complicating factors, all within the contexts of the human body or an aircraft, respectively. Climatologists have far more raw data at their fingertips, but its analysis is overwhelmingly more complicated. They only have ever had one subject, not billions as with a doctor or hundreds of thousands as with a pilot. Their subject is constantly changing in every conceivable way, with one action having so many reactions as it is almost an infinitude; it is chaos. I am sorry, Brian, but your analogy is weak, another apparent fallacy.

Even if climatologists were able to develop a reliable model projecting climate change, what tools do you propose that they have in their toolkit to cure the ailment? For that matter, what is the optimal state of nature to foster the advancement of man? Should the optimal state of nature be sought for human benefit, or should consideration be given to ensuring that certain other extraneous species avoid extinction? These are not questions for climatologists, but for politicians, philosophers, economists, and anthropologists. And guess in which fields all my crackpot professors--which you'd apparently consider 'experts'--happened to teach...

[crunchtastic]

Huh?

I mean, human ability to reason does not seem to help us refrain from destroying each other, or the things we depend upon to survive. So for a reasoned and anaytical person like yourself, it must be depressing to comtemplate that reason usually loses out to financial, hence, political agendas (the reason-losing-out part is commonly referred to as a sympton of the 'human condition'.)

I was taking the dim view, and stepped a little off track, I guess. Oopsie.

[TheNiche]

I mean, human ability to reason does not seem to help us refrain from destroying each other, or the things we depend upon to survive. So for a reasoned and anaytical person like yourself, it must be depressing to comtemplate that reason usually loses out to financial, hence, political agendas (the reason-losing-out part is commonly referred to as a sympton of the 'human condition'.)

I kind of see it as being more frequently the other way around, that those whining about the "human condition" rather than their "self condition" can't even run their own lives very well, yet try to run everyone else's by creating useless little political factions that like to tell me what I should be like, what should please me and disgust me, and then take great joy in screwing up my finances without even regard to whether it is beneficial to them or not.

...probably a topic for a different thread, though.

[Jax]

Yeah, most professors do not even accept Wiki information as references.

Funny you say that because I just got out of a class where the professor was really excited that the Wikipedia page on the filtered back projection algorithm for tomographic image reconstruction was so good, it was better than his own notes he made for the class. I guess filtered back projection isn't as politicized as global warming though.

Your GW scientists are no different than those you claim to be in "big oil's" pocket, they just have you and me, and the rest of the American taxpayers footing their bills.

P.S. TJones: Do you know how much money scientists make? Not a whole lot, especially when you compare scientists to oil companies. The US doesn't exactly dedicate a large portion of the budget to climate research either.

There's WAY more money to be made in the war and oil industries. Anybody who's a climatologist for the money is going to be extremely disappointed.

Edited February 6, 2008 by Jax

[TheNiche]

Funny you say that because I just got out of a class where the professor was really excited that the Wikipedia page on the filtered back projection algorithm for tomographic image reconstruction was so good, it was better than his own notes he made for the class. I guess filtered back projection isn't as politicized as global warming though.

Yep, wikipedia's economics articles are also generally good...at least on technical concepts that non-economics folks wouldn't know enough to ever reference. I can usually pick out a few minor things that they don't quite hit the right wording on or leave out, but all in all, I've got few complaints.

[houstonmacbro]

Because it (Wiki) is not peer reviewed. Add to the fact that ANYONE can edit entries and it because less-than-collegiate standard.

I am not saying there is not good info there, and often it is superb, but for academic purposes, it is not useful for serious research.