Climate Change

What is your opinion of Climate Change?

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#151
#151
Noble laureate George Wald prophesied in 1970 that civilization would end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” The Daily Caller reported. Civilization is still here.
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Ha. They were worthless long before Obama received one.
 
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#153
#153
Sandvol said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...acd802-07de-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html
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While I disagree with those who are overly skeptical of the science, I am 100% pro free speech entirely. You can't allow people to only speak their mind when they agree with your political views. That's why i generally disagree with the PC movement. People must be allowed to express themselves, even if it could be considered offensive. Thats why i wanted to poll VN and start a dialog on this topic, I wanted to hear from people with different opinions than my own.
 
#154
#154
volfox72 said:
While I disagree with those who are overly skeptical of the science, I am 100% pro free speech entirely. You can't allow people to only speak their mind when they agree with your political views. That's why i generally disagree with the PC movement. People must be allowed to express themselves, even if it could be considered offensive. Thats why i wanted to poll VN and start a dialog on this topic, I wanted to hear from people with different opinions than my own.
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When I was working on my MS in engineering, a very competent and grounded professor told me there was a significant disconnect between people working at the theoretical level and those applying technology. That is true. Later when I found myself at the upper level of particular testing methods in nuclear plants and needing to bridge the gap, I did find that far too often people at the theoretical level were isolated from meaningful application. That isolation impacted/diminished the value of their contribution because in a sense they were also isolated from reality.

At professional conferences I found myself thinking "Not another one of those presentations" - and there were plenty coming from doctoral candidates and research organizations. I could understand where they were coming from, but the question was more why? It was something like a runaway train - plenty of everything necessary but without meaningful direction and unresponsive to attempts to control it. Just like a runaway train - almost impossible to control, theoretical science has an arrogant power of its own.

If you can grasp that, then you can grasp the problem with "science". "Outsiders" who are very accomplished in their own rights and in fields equally or more difficult than say climate science are categorized as skeptics when they question the "science". It's a term used in derision to discount the input as meaningless because the person making the input isn't one of the chosen - quite basically an attack on the person to discount what he says. Funny thing is that a politician or actor with absolutely no qualification can certainly be an advocate - their words are meaningful. So you can have credible advocates who know nothing but who accept the "science", but someone technically competent to judge the work (but who isn't of that particular clique) is just a "skeptic" or a "doubter" and considered insignificant noise. That's how you have a score of 97-3 in favor of scientists - you just exclude everyone else - after all an engineer or a doctor isn't a "scientist" and other scientists don't have the right pedigree.

What I find pretty much every time I read a paper on climate change is the incompleteness - including lack of specifics, lack of disclosure (why data are "adjusted"), and lack of accountability. We didn't have weather stations recording data 400,000 years ago, yet there seems to be no problem with comparing averaged data today with a few calculated ancient data points. However, a few questions later you'll find a skeptic being chastised for "using only isolated data." Then you may find an argument that the southern hemisphere is a better predictor because the use of aerosols was less prevalent in the southern hemisphere, but then the southern hemisphere significantly lagged in recording weather data. If you take the more current data (from when we actually have a reasonable network of monitoring stations), that is only a blip in history, and not a meaningful trend at all, but anyone who slips up and mentions a warm year or so better be prepared for a lecture about weather and climate. There are many drivers, heat sources and sinks, and many different feedback mechanisms; but it certainly looks like they are too much ignored in favor of the "consensus" - that man is driving us to oblivion by overwhelming every other worldly factor under the sun - including the sun - by pumping CO2 into the air.
 
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#155
#155
am64 said:
when i was working on my ms in engineering, a very competent and grounded professor told me there was a significant disconnect between people working at the theoretical level and those applying technology. That is true. Later when i found myself at the upper level of particular testing methods in nuclear plants and needing to bridge the gap, i did find that far too often people at the theoretical level were isolated from meaningful application. That isolation impacted/diminished the value of their contribution because in a sense they were also isolated from reality.

At professional conferences i found myself thinking "not another one of those presentations" - and there were plenty coming from doctoral candidates and research organizations. I could understand where they were coming from, but the question was more why? It was something like a runaway train - plenty of everything necessary but without meaningful direction and unresponsive to attempts to control it. Just like a runaway train - almost impossible to control, theoretical science has an arrogant power of its own.

If you can grasp that, then you can grasp the problem with "science". "outsiders" who are very accomplished in their own rights and in fields equally or more difficult than say climate science are categorized as skeptics when they question the "science". It's a term used in derision to discount the input as meaningless because the person making the input isn't one of the chosen - quite basically an attack on the person to discount what he says. Funny thing is that a politician or actor with absolutely no qualification can certainly be an advocate - their words are meaningful. So you can have credible advocates who know nothing but who accept the "science", but someone technically competent to judge the work (but who isn't of that particular clique) is just a "skeptic" or a "doubter" and considered insignificant noise. That's how you have a score of 97-3 in favor of scientists - you just exclude everyone else - after all an engineer or a doctor isn't a "scientist" and other scientists don't have the right pedigree.

What i find pretty much every time i read a paper on climate change is the incompleteness - including lack of specifics, lack of disclosure (why data are "adjusted"), and lack of accountability. We didn't have weather stations recording data 400,000 years ago, yet there seems to be no problem with comparing averaged data today with a few calculated ancient data points. However, a few questions later you'll find a skeptic being chastised for "using only isolated data." then you may find an argument that the southern hemisphere is a better predictor because the use of aerosols was less prevalent in the southern hemisphere, but then the southern hemisphere significantly lagged in recording weather data. If you take the more current data (from when we actually have a reasonable network of monitoring stations), that is only a blip in history, and not a meaningful trend at all, but anyone who slips up and mentions a warm year or so better be prepared for a lecture about weather and climate. There are many drivers, heat sources and sinks, and many different feedback mechanisms; but it certainly looks like they are too much ignored in favor of the "consensus" - that man is driving us to oblivion by overwhelming every other worldly factor under the sun - including the sun - by pumping co2 into the air.
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100%.
 
#157
#157
AM64 said:
When I was working on my MS in engineering, a very competent and grounded professor told me there was a significant disconnect between people working at the theoretical level and those applying technology. That is true. Later when I found myself at the upper level of particular testing methods in nuclear plants and needing to bridge the gap, I did find that far too often people at the theoretical level were isolated from meaningful application. That isolation impacted/diminished the value of their contribution because in a sense they were also isolated from reality.

At professional conferences I found myself thinking "Not another one of those presentations" - and there were plenty coming from doctoral candidates and research organizations. I could understand where they were coming from, but the question was more why? It was something like a runaway train - plenty of everything necessary but without meaningful direction and unresponsive to attempts to control it. Just like a runaway train - almost impossible to control, theoretical science has an arrogant power of its own.

If you can grasp that, then you can grasp the problem with "science". "Outsiders" who are very accomplished in their own rights and in fields equally or more difficult than say climate science are categorized as skeptics when they question the "science". It's a term used in derision to discount the input as meaningless because the person making the input isn't one of the chosen - quite basically an attack on the person to discount what he says. Funny thing is that a politician or actor with absolutely no qualification can certainly be an advocate - their words are meaningful. So you can have credible advocates who know nothing but who accept the "science", but someone technically competent to judge the work (but who isn't of that particular clique) is just a "skeptic" or a "doubter" and considered insignificant noise. That's how you have a score of 97-3 in favor of scientists - you just exclude everyone else - after all an engineer or a doctor isn't a "scientist" and other scientists don't have the right pedigree.

What I find pretty much every time I read a paper on climate change is the incompleteness - including lack of specifics, lack of disclosure (why data are "adjusted"), and lack of accountability. We didn't have weather stations recording data 400,000 years ago, yet there seems to be no problem with comparing averaged data today with a few calculated ancient data points. However, a few questions later you'll find a skeptic being chastised for "using only isolated data." Then you may find an argument that the southern hemisphere is a better predictor because the use of aerosols was less prevalent in the southern hemisphere, but then the southern hemisphere significantly lagged in recording weather data. If you take the more current data (from when we actually have a reasonable network of monitoring stations), that is only a blip in history, and not a meaningful trend at all, but anyone who slips up and mentions a warm year or so better be prepared for a lecture about weather and climate. There are many drivers, heat sources and sinks, and many different feedback mechanisms; but it certainly looks like they are too much ignored in favor of the "consensus" - that man is driving us to oblivion by overwhelming every other worldly factor under the sun - including the sun - by pumping CO2 into the air.
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Get out of here with your common sense!
 
#159
#159
Any scientific theory whose adherents threaten those who either question or doubt the theory in a public setting with lawsuits and jail time ceases to be science and enters the realm of state-sponsored religion enforced by a police state apparatus.
 
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#161
#161
Climate change has been great for my beach town economy. People are here year round and everyone is making great money because of it!
 
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#162
#162
Thinking that GW will somehow stop the functioning of capitalism is silly. It sounds more like people who have loads invested in coal and oil stocks are unwilling to sell them and invest in the alternatives that would benefit.

Sort of like arguing that the rise of the gasoline engine should never have happened because of what it did to all of the horses.
 
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#163
#163
jvol1 said:
Thinking that GW will somehow stop the functioning of capitalism is silly. It sounds more like people who have loads invested in coal and oil stocks are unwilling to sell them and invest in the alternatives that would benefit.

Sort of like arguing that the rise of the gasoline engine should never have happened because of what it did to all of the horses.
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Most people who understand economics know a government can't create or force a market. Governments are the last bad actors.
 
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#165
#165
I've been off for a couple of weeks. The Chemtrail count is a little low. Gonna be fixing that in the morning.
 
#167
#167
DlkEtqy.gif
 
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#170
#170
AM64 said:
When I was working on my MS in engineering, a very competent and grounded professor told me there was a significant disconnect between people working at the theoretical level and those applying technology. That is true. Later when I found myself at the upper level of particular testing methods in nuclear plants and needing to bridge the gap, I did find that far too often people at the theoretical level were isolated from meaningful application. That isolation impacted/diminished the value of their contribution because in a sense they were also isolated from reality.

At professional conferences I found myself thinking "Not another one of those presentations" - and there were plenty coming from doctoral candidates and research organizations. I could understand where they were coming from, but the question was more why? It was something like a runaway train - plenty of everything necessary but without meaningful direction and unresponsive to attempts to control it. Just like a runaway train - almost impossible to control, theoretical science has an arrogant power of its own.

If you can grasp that, then you can grasp the problem with "science". "Outsiders" who are very accomplished in their own rights and in fields equally or more difficult than say climate science are categorized as skeptics when they question the "science". It's a term used in derision to discount the input as meaningless because the person making the input isn't one of the chosen - quite basically an attack on the person to discount what he says. Funny thing is that a politician or actor with absolutely no qualification can certainly be an advocate - their words are meaningful. So you can have credible advocates who know nothing but who accept the "science", but someone technically competent to judge the work (but who isn't of that particular clique) is just a "skeptic" or a "doubter" and considered insignificant noise. That's how you have a score of 97-3 in favor of scientists - you just exclude everyone else - after all an engineer or a doctor isn't a "scientist" and other scientists don't have the right pedigree.

What I find pretty much every time I read a paper on climate change is the incompleteness - including lack of specifics, lack of disclosure (why data are "adjusted"), and lack of accountability. We didn't have weather stations recording data 400,000 years ago, yet there seems to be no problem with comparing averaged data today with a few calculated ancient data points. However, a few questions later you'll find a skeptic being chastised for "using only isolated data." Then you may find an argument that the southern hemisphere is a better predictor because the use of aerosols was less prevalent in the southern hemisphere, but then the southern hemisphere significantly lagged in recording weather data. If you take the more current data (from when we actually have a reasonable network of monitoring stations), that is only a blip in history, and not a meaningful trend at all, but anyone who slips up and mentions a warm year or so better be prepared for a lecture about weather and climate. There are many drivers, heat sources and sinks, and many different feedback mechanisms; but it certainly looks like they are too much ignored in favor of the "consensus" - that man is driving us to oblivion by overwhelming every other worldly factor under the sun - including the sun - by pumping CO2 into the air.
Click to expand...
AM64, I don't care to address all your misinterpretations and misrepresentations or to play whack-a-mole with points refuted a thousand times. This has all been covered ad nauseum in the official thread. I try to avoid such long-winded posts and don't intend to bless y'all with any more, but I will say this.

To those of us who are technically competent in related fields, it's clear that you are not quite as knowledgeable on the topic as you may think when you bring up talking points as silly as this one. The sun is not causing global warming. For one, solar output has been fairly constant if not decreasing over the past 40 years. We can measure the amount of solar radiation and radiation of different wavelengths. Thanks to the greenhouse effect, outgoing infrared radiation has decreased while incoming IR radiation has increased. We can measure this imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and we know that it’s specifically due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Since the industrial revolution, the IPCC shows that radiative forcing from CO2 has increased 1.7 W/m2 and the total anthropogenic forcing is about 2.3 W/m2, whereas the change in solar irradiance is less than 0.1 W/m2. Furthermore, the stratosphere is cooling due to the greenhouse effect. If the sun were causing global warming then the stratosphere would be warming like the lower atmosphere. We’ve checked, double checked, triple checked, ad infinitum. Honestly, do you really not think scientists would investigate whether global warming had anything to do with the sun? Do you really think other forcings are simply ignored?

Also, your attempts at painting climate scientists as some isolated clique are way off. Publishing climate scientists include physicists, atmospheric chemists, geologists, astronomers, oceanographers, glaciologists, mathematicians, etc. You’re not accusing some isolated clique of fraud; you’re accusing the entire scientific community of fraud. Every major scientific society in the world acknowledges the realities of anthropogenic climate change. Not even oil companies deny climate change. I myself am a private sector geologist with a master’s degree and physics/geophysics background. In all my academic and professional career I’ve never personally met another scientist who rejects climate change, including several in the oil & gas industry. There is an overwhelming consensus both in the literature and in the scientific community. I’ve been to plenty of conferences and professional society meetings and it is frequently a hot topic. It’s not some theoretical academic exercise; we are seeing and dealing with the effects already. And it bears repeating that
VolsSportsFan said:
it's pretty naïve to believe that the top scientists in the world wouldn't love to prove that climate change isn't real.
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You’re right though, there probably isn’t as large a consensus among doctors or engineers (though I bet it’s significantly higher than the general populace). Likewise, there’s probably less of a consensus on concussions and CTE amongst orthopedists than neurologists. There’s probably less consensus on vaccines amongst environmental scientists than pediatricians. I’m sure the consensus on GMOs is lower among computer programmers than it is amongst food scientists. That’s not to say orthopedists, environmental scientists, and programmers aren’t smart people. Get my point?

Finally, to conclude my soapbox rant, I’ll say again that there truly are palatable solutions to climate change. There are better policy options than Obama’s EPA regulations. Cap-and-trade, for example, was invented by the Reagan administration to tackle lead pollution, and was later successfully employed by Reagan and Bush to fight ozone depletion and acid rain. It’s a viable option with a good track record. Most economists (and even Exxon) prefer some type of revenue-neutral carbon tax swap. We could put a price on carbon emissions and cut income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. We could tax consumption instead of production, like the Fair Tax. BC has had a successful revenue-neutral carbon tax since 2008. My state of Washington is currently debating a revenue-neutral carbon tax that cuts sales tax and the business & operations tax on manufacturing. Many states and countries have some form of carbon pricing and it hasn’t lead them to economic ruin. We can do this efficiently without raising net taxes. And when we do this right it will bolster nuclear and natural gas and not just “green” energy.

Just because climate change is a real problem doesn’t mean we have to succumb to the democrats’ policies. We need to stop this fake debate about whether climate change is happening and have a rational discussion about what to do about it. But as long as certain politicians refuse to come to the table, they’re just going to continue being left out of that discussion. That’s how you get Obama’s (and soon enough, Hillary’s) Clean Power Plan.

:twocents:
 
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#171
#171
T.N. Buckingham said:
Any scientific theory whose adherents threaten those who either question or doubt the theory in a public setting with lawsuits and jail time ceases to be science and enters the realm of state-sponsored religion enforced by a police state apparatus.
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Signed,

Philip Morris
RJ Reynolds
Brown & Williamson
Lorillard
 
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#175
#175
bartw said:
am64, i don't care to address all your misinterpretations and misrepresentations or to play whack-a-mole with points refuted a thousand times. This has all been covered ad nauseum in the official thread. I try to avoid such long-winded posts and don't intend to bless y'all with any more, but i will say this.

To those of us who are technically competent in related fields, it's clear that you are not quite as knowledgeable on the topic as you may think when you bring up talking points as silly as this one. The sun is not causing global warming. For one, solar output has been fairly constant if not decreasing over the past 40 years. We can measure the amount of solar radiation and radiation of different wavelengths. Thanks to the greenhouse effect, outgoing infrared radiation has decreased while incoming ir radiation has increased. We can measure this imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and we know that it’s specifically due to co2 and other greenhouse gases. Since the industrial revolution, the ipcc shows that radiative forcing from co2 has increased 1.7 w/m2 and the total anthropogenic forcing is about 2.3 w/m2, whereas the change in solar irradiance is less than 0.1 w/m2. Furthermore, the stratosphere is cooling due to the greenhouse effect. If the sun were causing global warming then the stratosphere would be warming like the lower atmosphere. We’ve checked, double checked, triple checked, ad infinitum. Honestly, do you really not think scientists would investigate whether global warming had anything to do with the sun? Do you really think other forcings are simply ignored?

Also, your attempts at painting climate scientists as some isolated clique are way off. Publishing climate scientists include physicists, atmospheric chemists, geologists, astronomers, oceanographers, glaciologists, mathematicians, etc. You’re not accusing some isolated clique of fraud; you’re accusing the entire scientific community of fraud. Every major scientific society in the world acknowledges the realities of anthropogenic climate change. Not even oil companies deny climate change. I myself am a private sector geologist with a master’s degree and physics/geophysics background. In all my academic and professional career i’ve never personally met another scientist who rejects climate change, including several in the oil & gas industry. There is an overwhelming consensus both in the literature and in the scientific community. I’ve been to plenty of conferences and professional society meetings and it is frequently a hot topic. It’s not some theoretical academic exercise; we are seeing and dealing with the effects already. And it bears repeating that

you’re right though, there probably isn’t as large a consensus among doctors or engineers (though i bet it’s significantly higher than the general populace). Likewise, there’s probably less of a consensus on concussions and cte amongst orthopedists than neurologists. There’s probably less consensus on vaccines amongst environmental scientists than pediatricians. I’m sure the consensus on gmos is lower among computer programmers than it is amongst food scientists. That’s not to say orthopedists, environmental scientists, and programmers aren’t smart people. Get my point?

Finally, to conclude my soapbox rant, i’ll say again that there truly are palatable solutions to climate change. There are better policy options than obama’s epa regulations. Cap-and-trade, for example, was invented by the reagan administration to tackle lead pollution, and was later successfully employed by reagan and bush to fight ozone depletion and acid rain. It’s a viable option with a good track record. Most economists (and even exxon) prefer some type of revenue-neutral carbon tax swap. We could put a price on carbon emissions and cut income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. We could tax consumption instead of production, like the fair tax. Bc has had a successful revenue-neutral carbon tax since 2008. My state of washington is currently debating a revenue-neutral carbon tax that cuts sales tax and the business & operations tax on manufacturing. Many states and countries have some form of carbon pricing and it hasn’t lead them to economic ruin. We can do this efficiently without raising net taxes. And when we do this right it will bolster nuclear and natural gas and not just “green” energy.

Just because climate change is a real problem doesn’t mean we have to succumb to the democrats’ policies. We need to stop this fake debate about whether climate change is happening and have a rational discussion about what to do about it. But as long as certain politicians refuse to come to the table, they’re just going to continue being left out of that discussion. That’s how you get obama’s (and soon enough, hillary’s) clean power plan.

Plus i'm really in a panic now because the El Nino has peaked and i'm not sure how much longer our side can continue to scare people with this sham. Us statists have to use fear to further our agenda and strike while the fire is hot.
:twocents:
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fyp?
 
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