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Michael_Mayo
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Scott, I hope you are aware that you have been influenced by conservative think tanks funded by the Koch brothers who would love to see Earth stewardship set back 60 years.
Global warming skeptics as knowledgeable about science as climate change believers, study says
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Scott_Lafrance
Guest
Huh? Are you psychic? How would you have any idea who I’ve been “influenced” by?
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St_Francis
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I am very happy that the meteorologists noticed we had a very warm winter. I myself noticed that! However, just as 10 years of stable temps (not going up) was apparently not evidence that GW is false, one warm winter is not evidence that it is true.
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St_Francis
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And you have been influenced by Al Goew and George Soros… so let’s ignore who the proponents are and stick to the issues.
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Michael_Mayo
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I’ve been influenced by the Pope and Bishops on this isssue.
Where do you get your information? Whose voice do you listen to?
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lynnvinc
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It could be that you both are sort of right and sort of wrong.
First of all, an extremely warm year or season is not proof of GW.
And 10 years of not very much increase in global average temps – esp considering we have been in a “solar minimum” with less irradiance from the sun during that time – is too short a time to disprove GW (tho considering the solar minimum there should have been cooling down to 1960s levels under the null hypothesis that there is no GW). One needs to consider trends over at least several decades or more. That’s why it took such a long time (up until 1995) for scientists to first establish at the .05 on the null (95% confidence) that AGW was happening…even tho the theory had been around for nearly 200 years, based on laws of physics (the greenhouse effect – see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier ).
There is a lot of “noise” (slushing around of temps from el ninos, la ninas, NAO, AOs & AAOs, etc) and several factors impacting climate, including solar irradiance, earth’s wobble & not-so-circular orbit, volcanoes eruptions (that cause cooling on short term scales), SO2 from coal burning causing cooling (lasting only weeks in the atmosphere compared to CO2 which can last for centuries and methane which lasts about 10 years). That’s why it’s been a long road to establishing AGW (teasing the signal out of the noise), which they started doing in 1995 at levels of scientific confidence, and the evidence has become more and more robust over the years since.
One of the troubling indications in recent years (tho not yet at 95% sci confidence) is that GW could lead to stronger and more frequent negative arctic oscillations – where the weather pattern in northern latitudes shifts from its typical west-to-east patter to a north-to-south pattern, bringing colder winters and freezes down to my place. We do most of our veggie growing in winter, since it is too hot here in summer. Several times the freezes have come and destroyed our garden. A few years ago I read about how a freeze had destroyed $1billion of N. Mexico’s winter crops.
And I had been thinking the one positive thing about AGW is that we would have less freeze risk here and better winter crops…
Fine, just fine
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St_Francis
Guest
The problem with a lot of these individual solutions is that they take money to implement. It may be my money, when I insulate my house, or it may be other people’s money, when I buy a Chevy Volt and get a $7500 rebate from the other people in this country through the government (which means it actually costs the other people *more *than $7500). So there are problems there, esp considering that our government is already spending way beyond *our *means.
So if I own a business or a house, and I can spend over $1/square foot + labor (I know how much for the insulation, but not for the labor), to save money on my heating bills, then I have to consider how much I will save and how long it will take to recoup my investment. You talk about recouping over the course of 12 or 20 years; the owner of the house or small business may not be able to afford to have that money tied up for that long. So it’s not actually a good deal for him.
Again with the comments about people’s motivations… some people simply cannot afford to do some of these things. Do you think they really *want *high heating bills? If they can’t afford it, they can’t afford it, whether it helps their neighbor or not.
How many solar companies have gone bankrupt? Unfortunately, the government did not listen to the market and now we are *all *on the hook for those lost billions.In between Cap and Trade, the Kyoto Agreement, and giving zillions to idiots who spend and go bankrupt, I haven’t seen anything which *the government *is foloowing up on which will not disrupt the economy. The Fee and 100% Dividend-- 100%? How will that work? How will those sending out all the money be paid? How will the costs of doing business (rent, utilities, taxes, etc) be paid? – So, the Fee and XX% Dividend sounds interesting, but I think possibly too little per person to be really helpful. It’s hard to tell without some financial analysis and hard numbers, one cannot see what would happen.
We have had a gas bill that high and live nowhere near Chicago, and have spent a lot of money doing things to keep our house warmer in the winter. She may well have had people helping her insulate and seal her house, and *still *have had that high a bill, because it is very *cold *in Chicago.
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Scott_Lafrance
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The popes and the bishops don’t have a stellar track record on the issues of science.
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Michael_Mayo
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True, I admit.
But neither do the Koch brothers.
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Scott_Lafrance
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The Koch brothers don’t have a billion devote followers, many of whom take their word on everything as Gospel.
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Michael_Mayo
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Koch, Exxon, etc, etc, big business and big money influence the conversation.
sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Climate_Coalition#Funding
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St_Francis
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And so do Soros and Al Gore…
*Who *believes something is *not evidence, unless they are an authority on that subject. *The Koch Brothers, Al Gore, the Pope… none of these people are experts in the particular field at hand; in fact, they are not even scientists.
So can we please take them off the table altogether? Because it is not doing your argument *any good at all. *
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Michael_Mayo
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OK, who do you want to put on the table?
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Scott_Lafrance
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God. Do you think that he will all the destruction of the ecology and climate before His appointed time?
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Michael_Mayo
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God has given us the freedom to care or destroy. It is up to us.
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St_Francis
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Not *who, *but what.
There are several questions to be answered:
Is the earth warming? If yes, continue.
Is the warming a problem? If yes, continue.
Is the warming of the earth caused in whole or in part by human activity? If yes, continue.
Is the amount of warming caused by human activity sufficient to warrant action? If yes, continue.
What aspects of human activity are causing the warming?
What steps can be taken to mitigate the warming *without *causing undue stress, esp on those who are more vulnerable to those stresses?
Each of these questions must be answered in order. Evidence to answer the questions cannot be stuff like, well, the Pope thinks… or the Koch Brothers say… The evidence must consist of *actual facts. *
Now, one of the major problems answering the *first *question is that we do not have a lot of long-term evidence. Just for hurricanes alone, the evidence is only about 4 decades old (since satellites were put up to monitor). We have been keeping records of temps only for about 160 years, which includes mostly only the time we are concerned about–we do not have a baseline from which to judge. And there are other problems as well.
So we have turned to checking out icebergs and tree rings. Those studies are apparently fraught with human interpretation all along the line of the studies and then run through computer modeling, which is only as good as the designer of the program–not faulting programmers, but if we don’t know something, we *can’t *include it.
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Michael_Mayo
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How sure do you need to be before some kind of taking action? Isn’t this where we turn to the majority of scientific opinion?
I suppose it is all in how one interprets the data.
One thing we can be sure of: those most vulnerable will suffer. It wont be Koch or Gore. It will be the family down the street who can’t pay utility bills or medical bills.
I suppose it is all in how one interprets the data.
One thing we can be sure of: those most vulnerable will suffer. It wont be Koch or Gore. It will be the family down the street who can’t pay utility bills or medical bills.
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St_Francis
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Most of the proposals that go beyond the personal are very disruptive to the economy and quite possibly to culture. Thus, we would need to be very sure of the answers to the above questions before making such major changes.
Considering the bits of news here and there regarding some of the problems with “the majority”, I would say no. They cannot simply come out and say this, that, and the other thing and expect us to act. They must *show *convincing evidence.
It’s like a court trial. The prosecutor cannot simply go before the jury, he must bring the evidence before them and the evidence must be tested. IMO, given the disruptions of the proposed solutions, I would suggest that we must be sure “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
That is a big factor; however, what makes this possible is transparency and replication. If I say, wow, pill X not only does what is claimed for it but also causes weight loss, but then refuse to show how I arrived at that conclusion, then my statement is not very convincing, is it? If otoh I explain what I did, allow others access to me research, and others perform similar and other experiments, then we are approaching an answer,.
Well, yes, the vulnerable do always suffer. I assume you couldn’t possibly mean that you are assuming that which you are trying to prove.
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Michael_Mayo
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Edmundus1581
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Good post, Michael!
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