Everything Climate Change

[Miekenstien]

raised co2 levels isn't in question. i argue the cause and the danger.

i would also argue that mass deforestation is more at the heart of the increase than any amount of cars and power plants. i do know that points to man made changes but it is more of a natural cause than the increase in what our out put of carbons is.

[Nilanka]

In this case, isn't it better to be safe than sorry? Shouldn't we do everything in our power to help reverse these climate trends just in case the overwhelming majority are correct with their predictions?

What are the global benefits of denying, other than maintaining low taxes?

[Miekenstien]

In this case, isn't it better to be safe than sorry? Shouldn't we do everything in our power to help reverse these climate trends just in case the overwhelming majority are correct with their predictions?

What are the global benefits of denying, other than maintaining low taxes?

i have said repeatedly that green energy/recycling/re-using and respecting the planet is the way forward.

your argument here is the exact same reason that i will be stating jesus christ is my personal lord and savior and the only way to god is through him just before i die.

i also don't care about paying taxes. i am all for taxes as long as everyone is doing there share. if taxes were at 60% across the board i wouldn't care.

[Nilanka]

i have said repeatedly that green energy/recycling/re-using and respecting the planet is the way forward.

your argument here is the exact same reason that i will be stating jesus christ is my personal lord and savior and the only way to god is through him just before i die.

i also don't care about paying taxes. i am all for taxes as long as everyone is doing there share. if taxes were at 60% across the board i wouldn't care.

Except Jesus doesn't have 97% of the world's scientists showing evidence for his existence

[Miekenstien]

Except Jesus doesn't have 97% of the world's scientists showing evidence for his existence

no time for all the religions so i am going with one of the big ones.

[Apollo]

i also don't care about paying taxes. i am all for taxes as long as everyone is doing there share. if taxes were at 60% across the board i wouldn't care.

I have a big problem with more taxes. Corporations will be given exceptions and it will be the citizens giving up even more of what they cannot afford to give. Those funds will be wasted and no one will be better off.

A green society is built on education, lifestyle changes, and stricter laws and regulations for industry. There should never be a time when the people should be taxed for this. That in my view is a complete cop out and failure of leadership.

The governments should invest less money on funding invading armies and more in sustainable living such as educational media, community garden programs, community solar programs, etc. Taxing won't change people's lifestyles, they'll just figure out how to keep on keeping on with even less.

[raptors999]

I have a big problem with more taxes. Corporations will be given exceptions and it will be the citizens giving up even more of what they cannot afford to give. Those funds will be wasted and no one will be better off.

A green society is built on education, lifestyle changes, and stricter laws and regulations for industry. There should never be a time when the people should be taxed for this. That in my view is a complete cop out and failure of leadership.

The governments should invest less money on funding invading armies and more in sustainable living such as educational media, community garden programs, community solar programs, etc. Taxing won't change people's lifestyles, they'll just figure out how to keep on keeping on with even less.

It creates an institutionalized environmental movement just like the US prison system. The system can't survive without fear. Criminals are real but the resources spent far outweighs the danger. Likewise, gas will be taxed to high heaven to support "green" policies

[Bendit]

It creates an institutionalized environmental movement just like the US prison system. The system can't survive without fear. Criminals are real but the resources spent far outweighs the danger. Likewise, gas will be taxed to high heaven to support "green" policies

If the need justifies a tax so be it imo. Caveats. It should really be a last resort after a rearrangement of priorities...meaning what was 30 yrs. ago the supporting bureaucracy continues slothfully. Another frequent occurrence is that many taxes collected for ostensibly sensible needs like highway/road improvements thru eg. license stickers etc. get siphoned off for some other unrelated govt. expenditure (like ordered out lunches for meetings possibly )....while traffic gridlock and potholes abound.

Re your prison example...read recently how the US prison system in their recent building expansion binge "somehow" allowed massive cost overruns. Why? Ostensibly to expand the size of the facilities....while there was a corresponding downturn in incarcerations/crime and political sensibility to amnesty as many as 6-7000 for those mostly in prison for simple drug possession convictions. It's an effing corrupt system out there. The pols are playing with fire in the age of communications/media and the lash back has started as evidenced by outsiders being the favourites in the next US elections. And worse if things dont change.

[mcHAPPY]

Except Jesus doesn't have 97% of the world's scientists showing evidence for his existence

The 97% is hardly reputable science and an oft-repeated refrain. It is merely one guy, John Cook, who has pushed climate change with the fury of a religious cult making this claim and as we are about to see that 97% is hardly convincing when one examines where that 97% actually came from.

If you’ve ever expressed the least bit of skepticism about environmentalist calls for making the vast majority of fossil fuel use illegal, you’ve probably heard the smug response: “97% of climate scientists agree with climate change” — which always carries the implication: Who are you to challenge them?

The answer is: you are a thinking, independent individual–and you don’t go by polls, let alone second-hand accounts of polls; you go by facts, logic and explanation.

Here are two questions to ask anyone who pulls the 97% trick.

1. What exactly do the climate scientists agree on?

Usually, the person will have a very vague answer like “climate change is real.”

Which raises the question: What is that supposed to mean? That climate changes? That we have some impact? That we have a large impact? That we have a catastrophically large impact? That we have such a catastrophic impact that we shouldn’t use fossil fuels?

What you’ll find is that people don’t want to define what 97% agree on–because there is nothing remotely in the literature saying 97% agree we should ban most fossil fuel use.

It’s likely that 97% of people making the 97% claim have absolutely no idea where that number comes from.

If you look at the literature, the specific meaning of the 97% claim is: 97 percent of climate scientists agree that there is a global warming trend and that human beings are the main cause–that is, that we are over 50% responsible. The warming is a whopping 0.8 degrees over the past 150 years, a warming that has tapered off to essentially nothing in the last decade and a half.

Even if 97% of climate scientists agreed with this, and even if they were right, it in no way, shape, or form would imply that we should restrict fossil fuels–which are crucial to the livelihood of billions.

Because the actual 97% claim doesn’t even remotely justify their policies, catastrophists like President Obama and John Kerry take what we could generously call creative liberties in repeating this claim.

On his Twitter account, President Obama tweets: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” Not only does Obama sloppily equate “scientists” with “climate scientists,” but more importantly he added “dangerous” to the 97% claim, which is not there in the literature.

This is called the fallacy of equivocation: using the same term (“97 percent”) in two different ways to manipulate people.

John Kerry pulled the same stunt when trying to tell the underdeveloped world that it should use fewer fossil fuels:

And let there be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the science is absolutely certain. . . 97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible. . . . . they agree that, if we continue to go down the same path that we are going down today, the world as we know it will change—and it will change dramatically for the worse.

In Kerry’s mind, 97% of climate scientists said whatever Kerry wants them to have said.

Bottom line: What the 97% of climate scientists allegedly agree on is very mild and in no way justifies restricting the energy that billions need.

But it gets even worse. Because it turns out that 97% didn’t even say that.

2. How do we know the 97% agree?

To elaborate, how was that proven?

Almost no one who refers to the 97% has any idea, but the basic way it works is that a researcher reviews a lot of scholarly papers and classifies them by how many agree with a certain position.

Unfortunately, in the case of 97% of climate scientists agreeing that human beings are the main cause of warming, the researchers have engaged in egregious misconduct.

One of the main papers behind the 97 percent claim is authored by John Cook, who runs the popular website SkepticalScience.com, a virtual encyclopedia of arguments trying to defend predictions of catastrophic climate change from all challenges.

Here is Cook’s summary of his paper: “Cook et al. (2013) found that over 97 percent [of papers he surveyed] endorsed the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.”

This is a fairly clear statement—97 percent of the papers surveyed endorsed the view that man-made greenhouse gases were the main cause—main in common usage meaning more than 50 percent.

But even a quick scan of the paper reveals that this is not the case. Cook is able to demonstrate only that a relative handful endorse “the view that the Earth is warming up and human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.” Cook calls this “explicit endorsement with quantification” (quantification meaning 50 percent or more). The problem is, only a small percentage of the papers fall into this category; Cook does not say what percentage, but when the study was publicly challenged by economist David Friedman, one observer calculated that only 1.6 percent explicitly stated that man-made greenhouse gases caused at least 50 percent of global warming.

Where did most of the 97 percent come from, then? Cook had created a category called “explicit endorsement without quantification”—that is, papers in which the author, by Cook’s admission, did not say whether 1 percent or 50 percent or 100 percent of the warming was caused by man. He had also created a category called “implicit endorsement,” for papers that imply (but don’t say) that there is some man-made global warming and don’t quantify it. In other words, he created two categories that he labeled as endorsing a view that they most certainly didn’t.

The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public—and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested:

“Cook survey included 10 of my 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.”

—Dr. Richard Tol

“That is not an accurate representation of my paper . . .”

—Dr. Craig Idso

“Nope . . . it is not an accurate representation.”

—Dr. Nir Shaviv

“Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument . . .”

—Dr. Nicola Scafetta

Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. It’s based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. It is a license to intimidate.

It’s time to revoke that license.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepst...-is-100-wrong/

It is this type of presentation of information that fuels skeptics. Information would not need to be manipulated in such a manner if the science was in fact clearly supporting the theory.

[Apollo]

Nice counter article to fuel more discussion.

[SkywalkerAC]

impacting the climate is to big. we are impacting the environment. earlier i had mentioned that in no science does correlation equal causation except in this one instance.

Except science has clearly established, through experimentation, that C02 (among other pollutants) is a greenhouse gas. That is, we have established C02 as a causal mechanism in this case.

The connection can be found in the spectrum of greenhouse radiation. Using high-resolution FTIR spectroscopy, we can measure the exact wavelengths of long-wave (infrared) radiation reaching the ground.

We know CO2 absorbs and re-emits longwave radiation (Tyndall). The theory of greenhouse gases predicts that if we increase the proportion of greenhouse gases, more warming will occur (Arrhenius).

Scientists have measured the influence of CO2 on both incoming solar energy and outgoing long-wave radiation. Less longwave radiation is escaping to space at the specific wavelengths of greenhouse gases. Increased longwave radiation is measured at the surface of the Earth at the same wavelengths.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empi...use-effect.htm

[SkywalkerAC]

On scientific consensus on this topic:

In the scientific field of climate studies – which is informed by many different disciplines – the consensus is demonstrated by the number of scientists who have stopped arguing about what is causing climate change – and that’s nearly all of them. A survey of 928 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change' published between 1993 and 2003 shows that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global warming is man caused (Oreskes 2004).

A follow-up study by the Skeptical Science team of over 12,000 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subjects of 'global warming' and 'global climate change' published between 1991 and 2011 found that of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming, over 97% agreed that humans are causing it (Cook 2013). The scientific authors of the papers were also contacted and asked to rate their own papers, and again over 97% whose papers took a position on the cause said humans are causing global warming.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/glo...-consensus.htm

[JimiCliff]

Nice counter article to fuel more discussion.

Again, though, coming from an ideologue author with no scientific training.

[Apollo]

People who aren't career scientist have the ability to utilize critical thinking. Everyone has motives and biases, Jimi.

Attacking the person instead of the stance is weak. If we only are going to agree with people we like then we'll never come to a consensus on anything ever again in this world.

[mcHAPPY]

Again, though, coming from an ideologue author with no scientific training.

Yes but numerous scientists who are scientifically trained spoke out that their work was not interpreted correctly and they do not fall in the 97%.

Also the group that did the review is from Cooks website. Bias at all? A little bit especially when you have the people writing the research saying the guy who is interpreting the research is wrong.

Man contributes CO2 - no doubt. Look at any car. Just breathe. But man made CO2 is not the singular cause of any change in climate and the effects of man are grossly overstated.

The earth is constantly changing, evolving, and most importantly adapting. The last 15+ years shows this.

If these people pushing man as the sole cause of climate change have their way there will be drastic consequences.

There is Evidence of a 300 year sun cycle. That cycle has turned and it is going to get colder - not warmer.