Global warming skeptics as knowledgeable about science as climate change believers, study says

[lynnvinc]

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.

Carrying a hankie to wipe hand in public restrooms, and turning off lights not it use cost nothing.

Don’t worry too much about that rebate. It will only last for the 1st 200,000 sold, and tho not as good as ending all subsidies and tax-breaks to oil and coal, it sort of establishes for me a bit more justice. I hate paying on April 15th for other people to go around polluting and killing people, causing miscarriages and global warming, etc.

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.

My Little Way of Environmental Healing just suggests to do whatever you can, not what you can’t. So if you hadn’t got a half penny, then God bless you.

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.

I think if it were an even playing field (without any subsidies to nuke, coal, gas, and oil) then solar and wind would fair well. I understand wind is now competitive with dirty energy, and solar is getting down there, and should be competitive within 5 or 10 years.

I would really like my tax dollars going to Volts, Leafs, wind and solar. That is, going into reducing the killing of people, rather than into killing people thru nuke (esp in the uranium mining phase), oil, and coals, and war. If we become a good nation of people against killing people (that includes abortion and homicide, as well), then perhaps other nations would respect us, and we could use more diplomacy than warfare.

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.

There actually is not bill for Fee & 100% Dividend right now. The closest is Cap and Dividend – see cantwell.senate.gov/issues/CLEARAct.cfm .

A Fee & 100% Dividend would put a fee on each ton of coal and barrel of oil as it comes from the earth or into our ports; the money raised from that would be divied up among all social security holders in the U.S. Remember how they gave us back some tax money some years back – it is feasible. Then people could use that money to offset their higher fuel/energy bills…or plow it into energy/resource efficiency/conservation measures and really be on the road to prosperity.

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.

Not sure about the particulars of that newspaper story, only that the woman lived in a one-bedroom apt in Chicago, and we lived in a 3-bedroom house in Aurora, where we didn’t get the benefit of lake-effect warmth during winter, as Chicagoans do. Our gas bill that month was less than $100 (compared to her $400). I’m assuming her windows were broken, or something. Maybe no caulking, or she kept the windows open. Perhaps there was no insulation at all in the outer walls or the attic (which would be the landlord’s responsibility).

 

[lynnvinc]

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.

As per your Qs, all the answers are “yes,” at good or high confidence. Don’t get the science from fossil-fuel-funded blog and internet sites. Go to the scientific journals.

(Also read Mann’s THE HOCKEY STICK AND THE CLIMATE WARS, for a correct understanding of how the paid, professional denialists have been able to bamboozle the public and blind them to the fact that the science is well established and based on many lines (not just 12 trees in Siberia, which even if those denialist-condemned trees are taken out of the mix, it does not change the results that show warming).

What really makes me sad, is that we didn’t need that much certainty to start mitigating, as JPII called us to do back in 1990. Life is precious, and people want 99% or 101% confidence they are harming and killing people before they will consider ceasing and desisting?

 

[Et_Cetera]

I don’t have time to read all 11 pages right now, but in regard to the global warming matter, I have always thought that whether or not it is happening (and I do personally believe that it is happening on some level) we should all still work to conserve and protect the earth. Humans are disturbing the carbon cycle. I don’t know why people would be opposed to trying to conserve our resources and reduce the carbon footprint. It seems Christian to me to want to take care of the earth. I think that this is another case where people are choosing Republican tenets over religious ones.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

As per your Qs, all the answers are “yes,” at good or high confidence. Don’t get the science from fossil-fuel-funded blog and internet sites. Go to the politically-funded scientific journals.

blah blah blah, a bunch of other highly contested stuff

 

[Non_sum_dignus]

Whatever’s going on, I’m just glad we had enough carbon to spray into the air to end that ice age 40,000 years ago.

 

[St_Francis]

Carrying a hankie to wipe hand in public restrooms, and turning off lights not it use cost nothing.

Maybe it’s because some of what I do requires a high degree of sanitation, but carrying around a dampened hankie in one’s purse or pocket seems… weird.

And even my parents taught me to turn off things I wasn’t using, way back in the 70s.

Don’t worry too much about that rebate. It will only last for the 1st 200,000 sold, and tho not as good as ending all subsidies and tax-breaks to oil and coal, it sort of establishes for me a bit more justice.

A mere $2B…

There are no subsidies to oil and coal; there are tax breaks, just as there are tax breaks to all businesses, and even to people who are paying mortgages.

And speaking of subsidies, how about those *billions *of loan guarantees we the taxpayers are on the hook for in solar energy?

I hate paying on April 15th for other people to go around polluting and killing people, causing miscarriages and global warming, etc.

What miscarriage-causing?

So you’d rather pay people with good incomes money out of your pocket to buy specific kinds of cars than to pay for the defense of our nation, which is what the federal government is *supposed *to do?

My Little Way of Environmental Healing just suggests to do whatever you can, not what you can’t. So if you hadn’t got a half penny, then God bless you.

But you are ok with putting people out of work?

I think if it were an even playing field (without any subsidies to nuke, coal, gas, and oil) then solar and wind would fair well. I understand wind is now competitive with dirty energy, and solar is getting down there, and should be competitive within 5 or 10 years.

I think you have not been keeping up with what’s going on in these industries. Solar I mentioned above, despite government aid to the tune of billions, they are going bankrupt, in Germany as well as in the US.

I would really like my tax dollars going to Volts, Leafs, wind and solar. That is, going into reducing the killing of people, rather than into killing people thru nuke (esp in the uranium mining phase), oil, and coals, and war. If we become a good nation of people against killing people (that includes abortion and homicide, as well), then perhaps other nations would respect us, and we could use more diplomacy than warfare.

Why would you want *the most inefficient *way of transferring money to be used? You want to take money out of some people’s pockets to finance stuff that is just *not working, *and yet these people whose money you want to be taken are people who work for their money! When you advocate taking money from them, you are making it *more *difficult for them to buy the stuff you want that money to go to, or even insulation or to pay someone to seal the cracks in their windows!

There actually is not bill for Fee & 100% Dividend right now. The closest is Cap and Dividend – see cantwell.senate.gov/issues/CLEARAct.cfm .

Did I say there was a bill for it?

A Fee & 100% Dividend would put a fee on each ton of coal and barrel of oil as it comes from the earth or into our ports; the money raised from that would be divied up among all social security holders in the U.S. Remember how they gave us back some tax money some years back – it is feasible. Then people could use that money to offset their higher fuel/energy bills…or plow it into energy/resource efficiency/conservation measures and really be on the road to prosperity.

It is *not *feasible: there are still costs associated with the transfer. People will not get 100% of the money taken in…

Now, do the math: how many tons of whatever will be taxed is brought into the country? How much would it be taxed? How much of the monies gathered will be distributed? How much does each individual get?

Not sure about the particulars of that newspaper story, only that the woman lived in a one-bedroom apt in Chicago, and we lived in a 3-bedroom house in Aurora, where we didn’t get the benefit of lake-effect warmth during winter, as Chicagoans do. Our gas bill that month was less than $100 (compared to her $400). I’m assuming her windows were broken, or something. Maybe no caulking, or she kept the windows open. Perhaps there was no insulation at all in the outer walls or the attic (which would be the landlord’s responsibility).

Well, sounds like it could have been anything, including a mistake, or a bill which included previous months’ usage, so probably best not to take this story into consideration.

 

[lynnvinc]

…Go to the politically-funded scientific journals.

blah blah blah, a bunch of other highly contested stuff

I wish people would just give life a chance. Give a fair reading to the sci lit. Listen to the scientist, hear their side of the smear campaigns.

The professional denialists have done massive cherry-picking to try and prove their case, not to mention out-and-out lies (like saying Mars is also warming, but there are no SUVs on Mars, or that cosmic rays have caused the warming, when there is not evidence of increase in cosmic rays.

In one example (see Mann, HOCKEY STICK, p.242-3, 362-4) out of 12,000 iterations of “red noise” to replicate the past 2000 years of temps from proxies, they said they randomly selected 12, which showed a hockey stick curve, thereby supposedly proving that using the methods the scientists used would turn up a hockey stick no matter what the data, that the problem was in the program, and that’s how Mann go the hockey stick (not from a real pattern in the data). It eventually came to light that the denialists cherry-picked the 12 curves most like a hockey stick out of 12,000 iterations – not a random pick (there were probably at least 12 or so that showed a negative hockey stick, as well).

Another tactic denialists use is to pick some year with an exceptionally high global temp, like around 1997-8 (which was due to the very strong el nino, piggy-backing on AGW) as a start year to establish a trend. Even in criminology method and stats we warn against choosing short term trends, bec we might miss the more important underlying pattern. That’s why, esp for climate trends, one needs at least several decades of data to establish a trend, esp because there are so many factors involved and there are great year-to-year fluctuations (a zig-zag).

These professional denialist are frauds, twisting facts, cherry-picking data, telling outright lies, and engaging in slander and character assassination of scientists and their science based on totally faudulent claims. Some have even crossed the boundaries into criminal activity. They are more dirty than the fossil fuel interests they are hired to protect.

They also stole 1000s of emails (looks sort of like a Murdock job, but bec the multinationals are so much more powerful the governments and police, it looks like they’ll never find the true culpits. But we know it was professional denialists or their orgs, bec they were right onto it, sifting through all the mail, only to find a few words they could take totally out of context to make the science and scientists look bad. For instance, “trick” referred to a method of normalizing datasets so they could be spliced together, and “hide the decline” referred to the divergence problem of tree ring proxies indicating a decline in temps after 1960, while the instrumental records showed an increase in temps (and I’ve been in correspondence with some scientists, who indicate others are getting to the bottom of this issue – I could supply sources for articles re this, if anyone is interested). In other words, the decline was in the less certain/exact proxy data, NOT in the instrumental, more reliable data, which show an increase in temps since the 1960s.

But people here probably read the hype in the media that it was a trick to hide the decline in temps (when reality was the opposite). Total fallacious interpretation. Just having the context would clarify that.

 

[lynnvinc]

What miscarriage-causing?

There are other pollutants in driving an ICE car, aside from GHG emissions, and these other pollutants cause health problems, including birth defects and miscarriages, and also acid rain, destroying lakes, forests, soil, property, and lungs (thru nitric acid), and the ocean (thru carbonic acid)

So keeping tires inflated, engine tuned, turning off engines in drive-thrus (and ordering the veggie burger), running multiple errands, moving closer to work/school/shops on next move, hypermiling, and, yes, buying and driving an EV and running it on wind or solar-generated electricity, as well as off-setting driving by walking, cycling, taking public transportation are all good things that reduce harms to people, including AGW harms (which include droughts & famine, floods, disease spread, sea rise, more intense storms, wildfires, crop harm. If you can’t do some of these good deeds, then try doing others when and if feasible.

As we used to say in Girl Scouts – do a good turn daily.

 

[Michael_Mayo]

The professional denialists have done massive cherry-picking to try and prove their case, not to mention out-and-out lies (like saying Mars is also warming, but there are no SUVs on Mars, or that cosmic rays have caused the warming, when there is not evidence of increase in cosmic rays.

Welcome to the machine:

sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/global_warming_denial_machine.html

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

There are other pollutants in driving an ICE car, aside from GHG emissions, and these other pollutants cause health problems, including birth defects and miscarriages, and also acid rain, destroying lakes, forests, soil, property, and lungs (thru nitric acid), and the ocean (thru carbonic acid)

So keeping tires inflated, engine tuned, turning off engines in drive-thrus (and ordering the veggie burger), running multiple errands, moving closer to work/school/shops on next move, hypermiling, and, yes, buying and driving an EV and running it on wind or solar-generated electricity, as well as off-setting driving by walking, cycling, taking public transportation are all good things that reduce harms to people, including AGW harms (which include droughts & famine, floods, disease spread, sea rise, more intense storms, wildfires, crop harm. If you can’t do some of these good deeds, then try doing others when and if feasible.

As we used to say in Girl Scouts – do a good turn daily.

By far the largest cause of pollution, in terms of sulfur dioxide emissions is volcanic activity, keeping your tire pressure up and getting oil changes is good stewardship, but its effect on the the climate is irrelevant compared to what a single active volcano, such as Mount Aetna in Sicily produce.

 

[Michael_Mayo]

Wonder what the owners of this company think about AGW?

 

[Michael_Mayo]

**Problem?

What problem?**
http://www.uctemuco.cl/aire/images/magnitkasmokestacks.jpg

 

[lynnvinc]

By far the largest cause of pollution, in terms of sulfur dioxide emissions is volcanic activity, keeping your tire pressure up and getting oil changes is good stewardship, but its effect on the the climate is irrelevant compared to what a single active volcano, such as Mount Aetna in Sicily produce.

SO2 only stays in the atmosphere a few weeks and has a cooling impact, while a portion of CO2 can stays up there 100s, even 100s of years, and CH4 stays up about 10 years (then degrades to CO2 +). The latter 2 have a warming effect, so volcanos just don’t compare to the effect we people are having.

However, having said that, volcanoes also emit CO2 (tho not as much and at the rate we are doing). For instance the end-Permian great warning some 251 mill yrs ago, which killed off 95% of life on earth, is thought to have been caused by extreme volcanism (the Siberian traps) when there was just one big continent, Pangea. However, it took many 1000s of years for that CO2 to get into the atmosphere, while we are pumping in like quantities with a couple 100s of years (there’s no analog in paleoclimatology for what we are now doing).

The upper end projection for warming by 2100 is 6C, the amount it warmed during the end-Permian extinction. Now I don’t know why some scientists and policy-makers seem to think only up until 2100, bec the warming could continue (and there’s .5 to 2.4C already in the pipes from past industrial emissions). So if it doesn’t get to 6C and the end of life as we know it by 2100, then perhaps it will by 2150 or 2200 – if we insist on continuing to emit GHGs lickity-split, as if there’s no tomorrow.

But then economists have “discounted” the future – children and our progeny aren’t worth a plug nickel. So I guess people who stand firmly with the economists will go ahead emitting GHGs lickity-split as if there’s no tomorrow, while those who value even lives of future generations as being as precious as our own lives try their dangest to mitigate this problem.

 

[St_Francis]

Just leaving a little note to say I am going off to think about these issues. I appreciate the sharing of your thoughts and information, thank you.