Gas prices

[Gerben42]

Looks like governments everywhere just don't want people to walk. Or to move closer to their work.

 

Now there's a point. The first thing that's discussed here in the framework of tax breaks is a reinstatement of a subsidy for those who live far from their work. I don't understand why the Green party (who should be in charge of this subject if they take the name Green seriously) point out that it would be much better for the environment to subsidize those who pay more rent because they live close to their work.

 

This is a problem in many cities, that in every town that is connected to the city-rail, the rent goes up. So people move away, and then a new rural villageis invaded by people working in the city. Then of course, someone gets the idea to connect it to the city-rail again, and the rents go up. Etc.

[luke warm]

As far as I know, no one on this forum is really qualified in this area. Do we have any climate scientists in the house?

No but we have a few who have qualifications in related fields (physics, astronomy, chemistry) as well as fields related to other aspects of this thread (economics), and they sometimes help by explaining some elementary misconceptions that come up in this forum and in the popular press. This can be interesting. What is not interesting (IMHO) is non-specialists (or even non-scientists) dismissing the scientific consensus based on his/her own attempts to practice arm-chair philosophy.

that's true, helene, there are people posting who have scientific backgrounds... and as adam said in an earlier post (i think it was him), we all tend to quote authorities who mirror our own presuppositions, or who we find more convincing... here are a few quotes from those i choose to believe, others may quote their own authorities

New peer-reviewed study (“Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz and which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research) finds global warming over last century linked to natural causes: Published in Geophysical Research Letters: Excerpt: “Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation. By studying the last 100 years of these cycles' patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times. Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability. The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century. Authors: Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, and Sergey Kravtsov: Atmospheric Sciences Group, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. See August 2, 2007 Science Daily – “Synchronized Chaos: Mechanisms For Major Climate Shifts”

Belgian weather institute’s (RMI) August 2007 study dismisses decisive role of CO2 in warming: Excerpt: "Brussels: CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive scientific study done by the Royal Meteorological Institute, which will be published this summer. The study does not state that CO2 plays no role in warming the earth. "But it can never play the decisive role that is currently attributed to it", climate scientist Luc Debontridder said. "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it." said Debontridder. "Every change in weather conditions is blamed on CO2. But the warm winters of the last few years (in Belgium) are simply due to the 'North-Atlantic Oscillation'. And this has absolutely nothing to do with CO2," he added.

New peer-reviewed study on Surface Warming and the Solar Cycle: Excerpt: The study found that times of high solar activity are on average 0.2 degrees C warmer than times of low solar activity, and that there is a polar amplification of the warming. This result is the first to document a statistically significant globally coherent temperature response to the solar cycle, the authors note. Authors: Charles D. Camp and Ka Kit Tung: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL030207, 2007

New peer-reviewed study finds clouds may greatly reduce global warming: Excerpt: This study published on August 9, 2007 in the Geophysical Research Letters finds that climate models fail test against real clouds. "To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent," Dr. Roy Spencer said. "At least 80 percent of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and those are largely under the control of precipitation systems. Until we understand how precipitation systems change with warming, I don't believe we can know how much of our current warming is manmade. Without that knowledge, we can't predict future climate change with any degree of certainty," Spencer added.  The paper was co-authored by University of Alabama Huntsville's Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. W. Danny Braswell, and Dr. Justin Hnilo of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.

and there may or may not be the consensus we all believe there is

A July 2007 review of 539 abstracts in peer-reviewed scientific journals from 2004 through 2007 found that climate science continues to shift toward the views of global warming skeptics. Excerpt: “There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm.” Update - August 29, 2007: SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY - Excerpt: "Of 539 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers 'implicit' endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category  (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.  This is no 'consensus.'"

Chinese scientists Lin Zhen-Shan, and Sun Xian’s 2007 study, published in the peer-reviewed Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, noted that CO2’s impact on warming may be “excessively exaggerated.” Excerpt: “The global climate warming is not solely affected by the CO2 greenhouse effect. The best example is temperature obviously cooling however atmospheric CO2 concentration is ascending from 1940s to 1970s. Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated.  It is high time to reconsider the trend of global climate change,” the two scientists concluded.

and does more co2 = a corresponding temperature rise? i personally don't know and i doubt if anyone posting does, but some say

Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball recently explained that one of the reasons climate models are failing is because they overestimate the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. Ball described how CO2’s warming impact diminishes. “Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint,” Ball explained in a June 6, 2007 article in Canada Free Press.

Boston College paleoclimatologist Dr. Amy Frappier recently explained how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can cease to have a warming impact. Frappier noted in a February 1, 2007 article in Boston College’s newspaper The Heights, that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere do not consistently continue to have a warming effect on Earth, but the impact of the gases instead stabilize and cease having a warming effect.

 

"At some point the heat-trapping capacity of [CO2] and its effect gets saturated," said Frappier, "and you don't have increased heating. The geologic record shows that many millions of years ago, CO2 levels were indeed higher - in some cases many times higher - than today," Frappier, who believes mankind is having an impact on the climate, explained. According the article, Frappier criticizes Gore because “the movie (An Inconvenient Truth) fails to mention any ancient incongruity between carbon dioxide and temperature.”

In May 2007, the “father of meteorology” Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin, dismissed fears of increased man-made CO2 in the atmosphere.

 

“You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” Bryson, who has been identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world, said. All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson added. 

Environmental economist Dennis Avery, co-author with climate scientist Dr. Fred Singer of the new book "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years," explained the impact man-made CO2 has had on global temperatures. "The earth has warmed only a net 0.2 degrees C of net warming since 1940. Human-emitted CO2 gets the blame for only half of that—or 0.1 degree C of warming over 65 years! We've had no warming at all since 1998. Remember, too, that each added unit of CO2 has less impact on the climate. The first 40 parts per million of human-emitted CO2 added to the atmosphere in the 1940s had as much climate impact as the next 360 ppm," Avery wrote in August 2007. The book, "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years," details more than 100 scientific studies with more than 300 co-authors revealing how solar activity is linked to the Earth's natural temperature cycles.

 

"How do the Greens project a mind-numbing surge of global warming from this New Math on Global Warming?" Avery asked, calling the new scientific research debunking climate fears a "real crisis" for Gore and the proponents of man-made catastrophic global warming.

i can post much more from many more experts and those "... who have qualifications in related fields (physics, astronomy, chemistry)..." but others can post *their* authorities just as easily... we are on the verge of forcing the spending of trillions of dollars, and for no (imo) good reason

[hrothgar]

As far as I know, no one on this forum is really qualified in this area. Do we have any climate scientists in the house?

No but we have a few who have qualifications in related fields (physics, astronomy, chemistry) as well as fields related to other aspects of this thread (economics), and they sometimes help by explaining some elementary misconceptions that come up in this forum and in the popular press. This can be interesting. What is not interesting (IMHO) is non-specialists (or even non-scientists) dismissing the scientific consensus based on his/her own attempts to practice arm-chair philosophy.

that's true, helene, there are people posting who have scientific backgrounds... and as adam said in an earlier post (i think it was him), we all tend to quote authorities who mirror our own presuppositions, or who we find more convincing... here are a few quotes from those i choose to believe, others may quote their own authorities

New peer-reviewed study (“Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz and which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research) finds global warming over last century linked to natural causes: Published in Geophysical Research Letters: Excerpt: “Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation. By studying the last 100 years of these cycles' patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times. Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability. The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century. Authors: Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, and Sergey Kravtsov: Atmospheric Sciences Group, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. See August 2, 2007 Science Daily – “Synchronized Chaos: Mechanisms For Major Climate Shifts”

Belgian weather institute’s (RMI) August 2007 study dismisses decisive role of CO2 in warming: Excerpt: "Brussels: CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive scientific study done by the Royal Meteorological Institute, which will be published this summer. The study does not state that CO2 plays no role in warming the earth. "But it can never play the decisive role that is currently attributed to it", climate scientist Luc Debontridder said. "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it." said Debontridder. "Every change in weather conditions is blamed on CO2. But the warm winters of the last few years (in Belgium) are simply due to the 'North-Atlantic Oscillation'. And this has absolutely nothing to do with CO2," he added.

New peer-reviewed study on Surface Warming and the Solar Cycle: Excerpt: The study found that times of high solar activity are on average 0.2 degrees C warmer than times of low solar activity, and that there is a polar amplification of the warming. This result is the first to document a statistically significant globally coherent temperature response to the solar cycle, the authors note. Authors: Charles D. Camp and Ka Kit Tung: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2007GL030207, 2007

New peer-reviewed study finds clouds may greatly reduce global warming: Excerpt: This study published on August 9, 2007 in the Geophysical Research Letters finds that climate models fail test against real clouds. "To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent," Dr. Roy Spencer said. "At least 80 percent of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and those are largely under the control of precipitation systems. Until we understand how precipitation systems change with warming, I don't believe we can know how much of our current warming is manmade. Without that knowledge, we can't predict future climate change with any degree of certainty," Spencer added.  The paper was co-authored by University of Alabama Huntsville's Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. W. Danny Braswell, and Dr. Justin Hnilo of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.

and there may or may not be the consensus we all believe there is

A July 2007 review of 539 abstracts in peer-reviewed scientific journals from 2004 through 2007 found that climate science continues to shift toward the views of global warming skeptics. Excerpt: “There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm.” Update - August 29, 2007: SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY - Excerpt: "Of 539 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers 'implicit' endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category  (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.  This is no 'consensus.'"

Chinese scientists Lin Zhen-Shan, and Sun Xian’s 2007 study, published in the peer-reviewed Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, noted that CO2’s impact on warming may be “excessively exaggerated.” Excerpt: “The global climate warming is not solely affected by the CO2 greenhouse effect. The best example is temperature obviously cooling however atmospheric CO2 concentration is ascending from 1940s to 1970s. Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated.  It is high time to reconsider the trend of global climate change,” the two scientists concluded.

and does more co2 = a corresponding temperature rise? i personally don't know and i doubt if anyone posting does, but some say

Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball recently explained that one of the reasons climate models are failing is because they overestimate the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. Ball described how CO2’s warming impact diminishes. “Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint,” Ball explained in a June 6, 2007 article in Canada Free Press.

Boston College paleoclimatologist Dr. Amy Frappier recently explained how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can cease to have a warming impact. Frappier noted in a February 1, 2007 article in Boston College’s newspaper The Heights, that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere do not consistently continue to have a warming effect on Earth, but the impact of the gases instead stabilize and cease having a warming effect.

 

"At some point the heat-trapping capacity of [CO2] and its effect gets saturated," said Frappier, "and you don't have increased heating. The geologic record shows that many millions of years ago, CO2 levels were indeed higher - in some cases many times higher - than today," Frappier, who believes mankind is having an impact on the climate, explained. According the article, Frappier criticizes Gore because “the movie (An Inconvenient Truth) fails to mention any ancient incongruity between carbon dioxide and temperature.”

In May 2007, the “father of meteorology” Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin, dismissed fears of increased man-made CO2 in the atmosphere.

 

“You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” Bryson, who has been identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world, said. All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson added. 

Environmental economist Dennis Avery, co-author with climate scientist Dr. Fred Singer of the new book "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years," explained the impact man-made CO2 has had on global temperatures. "The earth has warmed only a net 0.2 degrees C of net warming since 1940. Human-emitted CO2 gets the blame for only half of that—or 0.1 degree C of warming over 65 years! We've had no warming at all since 1998. Remember, too, that each added unit of CO2 has less impact on the climate. The first 40 parts per million of human-emitted CO2 added to the atmosphere in the 1940s had as much climate impact as the next 360 ppm," Avery wrote in August 2007. The book, "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years," details more than 100 scientific studies with more than 300 co-authors revealing how solar activity is linked to the Earth's natural temperature cycles.

 

"How do the Greens project a mind-numbing surge of global warming from this New Math on Global Warming?" Avery asked, calling the new scientific research debunking climate fears a "real crisis" for Gore and the proponents of man-made catastrophic global warming.

i can post much more from many more experts and those "... who have qualifications in related fields (physics, astronomy, chemistry)..." but others can post *their* authorities just as easily... we are on the verge of forcing the spending of trillions of dollars, and for no (imo) good reason

Before anyone gets too excited about all the different sources that Jimmy is citing:

 

All he's doing is extracting a series of quotes from the Inhofe EPW Press Blog...

 

Most of these quotes can be found on a single web page

 

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...3A-B35D0842FED8

 

Jimmy's research methodolgy amounts to nothing more than parroting the views of extreme skeptics.

[Lobowolf]

Just for future reference, what's the technical difference between "citing" and "parroting"? I'll be very sad if this thread dries up while we wait for BBFers to conduct and publish their own firsthand research.

 

I can see undercutting the quotations by noting that they're a relatively small number, but does the fact that they've previously been compiled and put on the same webpage really make them any more or less credible?

[cherdano]

Just for future reference, what's the technical difference between "citing" and "parroting"?  I'll be very sad if this thread dries up while we wait for BBFers to conduct and publish their own firsthand research.

It would have been "citing" if Jimmy had given a link to the post by Marc Morano (on the senate webpages under control of Senator Inhofe) from which he was copy-and-pasting several paragraphs. Not giving that source was disingenuous by Jimmy.

I can see undercutting the quotations by noting that they're a relatively small number, but does the fact that they've previously been compiled and put on the same webpage really make them any more or less credible?

Yes, they make them less credible.

 

If you want to present a biased view of the scientific consensus, then you will always find a couple of quotes that give a wrong impression. So when we see a list of quotes by scientists, we have to rely on whoever compiled that list that they have given us a representable selection of quotes.

 

If Jimmy had stumbled on these quotes on several different sources, then there is a better chance of them being representative. Instead, most of them are directly from the compilation of an Inhofe staffer and former swiftboater, which means they

 

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

The quote also fails to mention that the author of the study was not an expert and hasn't been able to publish the study in a well-respected peer-reviewed scientific journal.

 

Congressional Republicans are making fools of themselves by trying to push their view of the scientific consensus, instead of trying to get informed without bias.

[Gerben42]

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

 

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

[luke warm]

Just for future reference, what's the technical difference between "citing" and "parroting"? I'll be very sad if this thread dries up while we wait for BBFers to conduct and publish their own firsthand research.

 

I can see undercutting the quotations by noting that they're a relatively small number, but does the fact that they've previously been compiled and put on the same webpage really make them any more or less credible?

you're right... the fact is, either we're about to make a huge economic blunder or we aren't... either an increase in co2 will have an inconvenient effect or it won't... man either contributes greatly to any increase or he doesn't... when people disagree with what has been termed 'the consensus', they are personally attacked more often than not...

[Gerben42]

the fact is, either we're about to make a huge economic blunder or we aren't.

 

One thing always stays the same: Those causing the damage are not the ones who are going to pay for it most. And personally I don't care if global warming is man-made or not. I still have to see the study that states that man-made industrial exhausts have a beneficial effect on the environment.

[cherdano]

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

 

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

This was not a media report. This was a blog post by a staffer of James Inhofe, a Republican senator.

[Al_U_Card]

Now, if only we can get the church to convince St. Peter to ask:

 

"And what did you do to decrease CO2 production?"

[luke warm]

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

 

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

This was not a media report. This was a blog post by a staffer of James Inhofe, a Republican senator.

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

[helene_t]

prices at the pump are at a five year low. Perhaps more importantly, oil price per barrel is down to around $50 or less from a high of maybe $130 plus. I am not so sure of all the causes, but I assume most would agree that it would be very good for the country if we didn't send monstrous amounts of cash out of the country to feed our addiction.

My immediate reaction is: why would the government want to interfere in the oil market? If prices are projected to go up in the future, it would cause the market value of oil resources to go up, thereby reducing demand now. If it ain't broke, don't fix it: to justify market regulation, there must be some evidence that the market doesn't work.

 

Then I realized that I don't know anything about how the oil market works. It is impractical to store huge amounts of oil in anticipation of price rices, so there would have to be a functioning market for oil fields. I suppose in most countries oil fields are owned by the state, which makes revenues by taxing oil production rather than by selling the fields once and for all. This would suggest that the market doesn't really work since producers anticipating increasing prices would have an incitement to produce before the government gets the idea of increasing the taxes. The story may be different in countries with weird economic systems such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. What do I know.

[cherdano]

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

Jimmy, we could go back on forth on the individual quotes. I already did so for one of them.

 

But this is really besides the point. I know a lot of scientists/mathematicians, and believe, just because someone got a job at Harvard/Yale/Stanford/... doesn't mean that they are one bit reasonable. It means that they have done some excellent research, for which they probably needed to some extremely clever thinking. That doesn't mean they have any bit of common sense, that they aren't crazy, etc. (One example I knew somewhat personally and from many first-hand stories was professor in Yale, extremely well respected math professor for his work in various areas, but one of his hobbies was proving HIV doesn't exist. Another of his pet theories was that typewriters are far superios than computers for writing books. Etc.)

 

Similarly, one climatological study alone cannot disprove a scientific consensus. Every climate model has uncertainties. Believing a single study over all others is like believing McCain will win the election because Drudge found a Zogby poll that put him within the margion of error.

 

So where does this leave us if we want to know about the scientific consensus on climate change? The idealistic approach of "listen to one side, listen to the other side, and see who makes more sense" isn't very practical. While it is sort of doable with a lot of googling (for example you can now find a lot of peer-reviewed literature via scholar.google.com), it takes a lot of time and you must learn a lot of background to make sense of the discussion. It makes much more sense to try to find unbiased sources to start with, that report realistically on the majority opinion of experts. Whatever sources you used that linked to Inhofe's web pages isn't one of them. It makes as much sense as using dailykos as an authoritative reference on the impacts of card check legislature, or asking House Republicans whether lowering capital gains taxes will fix the economic crisis.

 

While there is a lot of crap out there, both on the web and in the American media, there are plenty of reasonable and unbiased sources that do more than giving you the false equivalence of "one expert said x and another expert said y". It's your job to find them (and that's not a difficult one) - assuming you want to be well-informed about the issues.

[jdonn]

(One example I knew somewhat personally and from many first-hand stories was professor in Yale, extremely well respected math professor for his work in various areas, but one of his hobbies was proving HIV doesn't exist. Another of his pet theories was that typewriters are far superios than computers for writing books. Etc.)

One of my alltime favorite professors was just like this. An extremely smart man and great teacher, who liked to argue passionately that recycling is a bad idea, that there would be fewer driving injuries if we eliminated seatbelts and replaced them with a spear coming out of the steering wheel pointed at the driver's heart (I bet you drive safely then!), etc.

 

While there is a lot of crap out there, both on the web and in the American media, there are plenty of reasonable and unbiased sources that do more than giving you the false equivalence of "one expert said x and another expert said y". It's your job to find them (and that's not a difficult one) - assuming you want to be well-informed about the issues.

You know what they say about assuming...

 

Wait a second, I nearly forgot. It's only the other side that is biased by an agenda.

[hrothgar]

The quotes are also not credible by themselves. Trying to make a political point out of the fact that 48% of the surveyed papers do neither endorse nor reject the theory of human contributions to global warming shows a basic lack of understanding of science. If that hypothesis is neither tested nor relevant to the paper, the authors have no reason to mention it.

 

Don't trust media to get the science right. In fact, usually assume that any article containing science is way off on some critical points. The film industry is worse, though, as they seem to think they can do without science advisors, or ignore them when they have one.

This was not a media report. This was a blog post by a staffer of James Inhofe, a Republican senator.

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

Hi Jimmy

 

For kicks and giggles, I did a search on Stephen Schwartz at RealClimate.org.

 

I picked Schwartz because he was the first citation that you listed. I chose Real Climate because its widely considered to be one of the best sites for discussing this type of stuff.

 

Here's the first link that came back

 

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...ivity/#more-471

 

I strongly recommend reading the complete article. Here are a couple of important quotes from the review (the first comes from the introduction, the second from the conclusion)

 

Despite the celebratory reaction from the denialist blogosphere (and U.S. Senator James Inhofe), this is not a "denialist" paper. Schwartz is a highly respected researcher (deservedly so) in atmospheric physics, mainly working on aerosols. He doesn't pretend to smite global-warming theories with a single blow, he simply explores one way to estimate climate sensitivity and reports his results. He seems quite aware of many of the caveats inherent in his method, and invites further study...

 

A response to the paper, raising these (and other) issues, has already been submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research, and another response (by a team in Switzerland) is in the works. It's important to note that this is the way science works. An idea is proposed and explored, the results are reported, the methodology is probed and critiqued by others, and their results are reported; in the process, we hope to learn more about how the world really works.

 

That Schwartz's result is heralded as the death-knell of global warming by denialist blogs and Sen. Inhofe, even before it has been officially published (let alone before the scientific community has responded) says more about the denialist movement than about the sensitivity of earth's climate system. But, that's how politics works.

 

My suspicion is that you can find similar types of analysis for most of the citations that you raised (I tried to track down information for articles 2 and 3 without much luck... I'll try again tomorrow morning before turkey day starts in ernest)

[luke warm]

thanks richard, and i (honestly) applaud anyone willing to at least address the issues that skeptics raise... most of us tend to block out opposing views, to some extent.. and i will read from the link you provided

 

oh, and happy thanksgiving to all

[blackshoe]

but what about the conclusions reached by the experts quoted? were they in error?

Those conclusions were quoted by a staffer for a Republican Senator. Therefore, the conclusions are by definition wrong, and probably deliberate lies. :P

[PassedOut]

I remember reading here some posts about a supposed global cooling scare in the 1970s. It seems that George Will yesterday made the same claim (Dark Green Doomsayers).

 

Nate Silver has posted a factual response to Will's piece, complete with charts and graphs: George F. Will Takes on Science, Loses Credibility

 

And yet, according to George F. Will, many scientists were convinced in the 1970s that global cooling was a significant threat to the planet. And if those scientists were so wrong before, why should we trust them when they say that global warming is a threat now?

 

There's just one little problem with this story, which reappears every so often in conservative discourse on the environment. Specifically, it's a crock of *****.

 

Certainly in the 1970s there were a handful of scientists and scientific reports that were concerned about the prospect of global cooling, the mechanism for which was usually given to be the greater number of aerosols -- tiny particles -- released by man-made pollutants that might concentrate in the atmosphere and block sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. An even smaller handful of these scientists may have been rather alarmist about the prospect; the media was happy to write cover stories on their proclamations.

 

At the same time, there was also already concern a about greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions that would result in planetary warming. There was a fair amount of debate at the time about which of these two effects -- the cooling effects of aerosols, or the warming effects of CO2 emissions -- would win out, or the planet would get lucky and stabilize at some sort of equilibrium between the two.

I hadn't noticed the "global cooling" argument before seeing it in these discussions, and now find it interesting that folks (including those who should know better) keep putting it forward.

[Winstonm]

it looks to me as if the desire for a carbon tax keeps people from looking at the bigger picture (how it will affect all of us)... now i'd be all for *cutting* taxes (even no corporate tax) on companies that had safe and reliable alternative sources of power... give companies an incentive to invest and produce

 

Companies have been given massive tax relief already and have not returned that money into the economy as investment but have hoarded the profits as pay raises for the executives and to increase share value through higher earnings. R&D spending has been dropping like a stone - no immediate return.

[hrothgar]

I remember reading here some posts about a supposed global cooling scare in the 1970s. It seems that George Will yesterday made the same claim (Dark Green Doomsayers).

 

Nate Silver has posted a factual response Will's piece, complete with charts and graphs: George F. Will Takes on Science, Loses Credibility

 

And yet, according to George F. Will, many scientists were convinced in the 1970s that global cooling was a significant threat to the planet. And if those scientists were so wrong before, why should we trust them when they say that global warming is a threat now?

 

There's just one little problem with this story, which reappears every so often in conservative discourse on the environment. Specifically, it's a crock of *****.

 

Certainly in the 1970s there were a handful of scientists and scientific reports that were concerned about the prospect of global cooling, the mechanism for which was usually given to be the greater number of aerosols -- tiny particles -- released by man-made pollutants that might concentrate in the atmosphere and block sunlight from reaching the planet's surface. An even smaller handful of these scientists may have been rather alarmist about the prospect; the media was happy to write cover stories on their proclamations.

 

At the same time, there was also already concern a about greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions that would result in planetary warming. There was a fair amount of debate at the time about which of these two effects -- the cooling effects of aerosols, or the warming effects of CO2 emissions -- would win out, or the planet would get lucky and stabilize at some sort of equilibrium between the two.

I hadn't noticed the "global cooling" argument before seeing it in these discussions, and now find it interesting that folks (including those who should know better) keep putting it forward.

Another good takedown at

 

http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/15/geor...rming-debunked/