United Liberty
A Global Warming Challenge for Liberals
Tue, 10/11/2011 - 1:10pm | posted by Louis DeBroux
For several years now there has been an ongoing debate regarding the impetus for President Obama’s economic policies. Were they the work of the smartest president in history, a man so intelligent that his wisdom could supplant the collective experience and choices of 300 million Americans, and in so doing restore our economy? Were they the well-intentioned but errant contemplations on an Ivy League egghead with lots of “book learnin’”, but without a shred of private sector experience that is the proving grounds for such ideas, being exposed to the unmerciful judgment of markets?
At this point I have come to the conclusion that it is an intentional effort to replace America’s free-enterprise system with a democratic-socialist style, centrally-planned, government run economy. Look at the evidence…the massive stimulus package which failed spectacularly, the auto union bailouts, government employee bailouts, Cash for Clunkers, Son of Stimulus, and myriad other economic “remedies”. Combine this with calls for increased taxes of “the rich”, more regulation and more government intervention in the market, and we end up with a long-term stagnant economy. One can no longer chalk it up to pure stupidity. If it were pure stupidity then the law of probabilities would dictate that Obama would have made the right decisions, even if only by accident, somewhat approaching fifty percent of the time.
Maybe the most costly and intrusive example of this government intervention that most Americans are unaware of (or at least unaware of the level of damage being done by it) is the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA was ostensibly founded to protect air and water quality, endangered species, etc. Yet today it has become a bludgeon used by government to circumvent the legislative process in pursuit of the elimination of private property rights. Bureaucrats at the EPA continually pass regulations and issue edicts that have the force of law without ever being exposed to the will of the people through the legislative process.
In order to justify their power grab, bureaucrats must have a pending catastrophe to use as an excuse to circumvent the will of the people, and always under the guise of being done for their own good. In the 1970’s it was the “coming Ice Age” which threatened the Earth, as well as population growth which was going to lead to a dearth of food and resources, which would cause a hundred million deaths.
Today the catastrophe comes in the form of “global warming”, the theory that man’s industrial activity is leading to elevated levels of carbon dioxide, which in turn warms the earth, which in turn melts the icebergs, which in turn causes sea levels to rise, which in turn is going to cause New York City skyscrapers to be underwater and Guam to tip over (…strike that last part…Guam capsizing would be the result of putting too many Marines on the island, making it too heavy on one side, according to Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson).
The problem now, at least for liberals, is that with each passing day more and more Americans stop believing in the dark fairy tale of global warming. And without that belief and the accompanying fear, liberals can’t get enough support to pass global warming bills into law, and therefore they miss out on the chance to expand government power. This falling support for the global warming nonsense is justified. NASA had to revise its predictions when it was discovered they were using faulty temperature data. The revised data showed that we are actually in a decade long cooling trend. Then you have the hacked e-mails from the East Anglia University CRU (Climate Research Unit), which showed that the lead scientists were frantically falsifying climate data when they discovered that the actual data did not support their political agenda (and put future billion dollar government grants at risk). In short, the entire foundation for global warming theory is being exposed as a huge lie perpetrated not only on the America people, but the entire world, all to justify the confiscation of private wealth to combat this phantom menace.
Of course, there are millions of liberals today that are still crying like weak-kneed Cassandras, warning us that the problem is all too real and the Earth is plummeting towards destruction unless we enact a full scale assault on industry to reverse the damage. We are told that the contradicting evidence is the work of conspiring capitalists and evil coal, oil and gas company executives. Yes, Chicken Little, the sky is falling.
This week a report was released that revealed that the EPA is preparing to hire 230,000 new bureaucrats to process the paperwork associated with the agency’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under cover of the Clean Air Act. The newer, incredibly stringent standards will mean that the number of businesses which are currently regulated by the EPA for CO2 emissions will jump from 14,000 to an estimated 6.1 million. The cost to taxpayers for the new staff is expected to be at least $21 billion.
This is hugely controversial considering the diametrically opposed positions of each side, and the cost incurred to business and taxpayers if continued. Yet I believe I’ve come up with a solution. The crux of the problem is proving whether global warming is the cause of man’s activity or natural cycles. I propose a scientific experiment to end the debate once and for all, and the test is really quite easy. The natural byproduct of human respiration is carbon dioxide. According to calculations by the chemistry department at UC-Berkeley (a liberal bastion that other liberals cannot therefore refute), the average adult human produces 360 liters of carbon dioxide per day. If we extrapolate that out, then we find that 360 liters/day x 365 days per year = 131,400 liters per year per adult human. So, if we assume everyone that voted for Obama supports his policies and would sacrifice to see him succeed, we now have a control group.
Now, if we take the 69.5 million people that voted for Obama, who each produce 131,100 liters of carbon dioxide per year through respiration, we conclude that Obama supporters produce 9,104,500,000,000 liters of carbon dioxide annually (yes, that is 9.1 trillion liters). If they are right, that has to be doing a lot of damage to the environment. My proposal is this; in order to prove their claims, all Obama supporters should voluntarily refrain from exhaling for a period of one year. If the corresponding elimination of 9.1 trillion liters of carbon dioxide produces a measurable decrease in the Earth’s temperature, the rest of us will jump on board and enact whatever laws are necessary to combat this meteorological menace. If there is no corresponding temperature drop despite such a drastic reduction in CO2, then we get to drop this nonsense once and for all, and allow people to enjoy the standard of living we’ve attained, and allow businesses to be unshackled from nanny government.
Everybody on board?
Here is a proposition both liberal and conservative ought to agree on: clean energy one tenth the cost of coal. By the way, the Ni in one US nickel coil equals the energy in 5 barrels of oil.
There is a new clean energy technology that is 1/10th the cost of coal. Don’t believe me? Watch this video by a Nobel prize winner in physics: http://pesn.com/2011/06/23/9501856_Nobel_laureate_touts_E-Cat_cold_fusio…
Still don’t believe me? It convinced the Swedish Skeptics Society: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece
LENR using nickel. Incredibly: Ni+H+K2CO3(heated under pressure)=Cu+lots of heat. Here is a detailed description of the device and formula from a US government contract: www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GernertNnascenthyd.pdf
By the way, here is a current survey of all the companies that are bringing LENR to commercialization: http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/08/the-new-breed-of-energy-catalyzers-…
I guess the point of this post was to say something to make you feel better about your own point of view? The claims about East Anglia, NASA, etc were misrepresentations or simply false, and there’s the glaring omission that there’s about as much consensus in the scientific community that the climate is warming on account of human activity as anything is in science. And then I guess the rest is humor. Next time, perhaps have a point? I’m being honest here: this was really just kind of childish.
DWT,
I see…so any facts that don’t comport with your political narrative are “misrepresentations or simply false”? I’d say that does not sound very scientific, but then again, global warmistas must embrace a willfull suspension of disbelief in order to cling desperately to their secular, Gaiaic religion in the face of actual facts.
For example, please explain the misrepresentation or falsity in the following excerpt from an e-mail from East Anglia University CRU chief PD Jones:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” He is blatantly admitting that he falsified the data to achieve a politically desirable outcome.
Feel free to peruse the following article as well, in which a scary report on the levels of Himalayan ice melt were found to have been falsified, despite the “scientist” knowing there was no data to support it (http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/25/ipccs-himalayan-glacie…)
Of course, we can also go straight to the source. Climate “scientist” Stephen Schneider, the lead author of the now-debunked IPCC TAR, which gave us the infamous Hockey Stick graph, told Discover magazine that “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.”
So you expect rational people to believe that there is no ulterior motive with global warming “scientists”, that they are noble warriors of rational thought, acting completely independent of external forces, such as the realization that if they report that man had virtually no statistically significant impact on the temperature of the Earth, then there is no longer any need to fund their research to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Sure, that makes sense…
The claim of “consensus” in the scientific community is both false and irrelevant. First of all, there is no such consensus. Second, even if there were, so what? When Gallileo postulated that the universe was heliocentric as opposed to geocentric, he was imprisoned for heresey, and there was almost complete consensus that he was wrong…but he was right. There was once consensus that the world was made up of four elements, but that turned out to be wrong too. There was once consensus that the atom is the smallest particle of matter, but that was wrong too.
So feel free to be an enthusiastic member of the global warming cult, and worship at the altar of the Al-goracle (who has made a nice, tidy chunk of change from his push for global warming policy). Just don’t expect reasoned, rational people to drink the Kool-Aid with you.
I see I hit a chord. That’s good. The important part of your reply is when you brought the word “rational” into focus. That’s good too. Additionally, you brought Galileo into the picture, and pulled out an important piece of that narrative. That’s also good, because most of the rest of what you say has the substance and character of emotional ejaculations that don’t have anything to do with science or reason. Happily, you did say a couple of reasonable things I agree with, so maybe there’s some common ground.
1. “so any facts that don’t comport with your political narrative are “misrepresentations or simply false”? — Mmm, you are the one who posted a political diatribe, not me. I haven’t voiced a political opinion. In fact, my position is that since politics don’t change scientific facts, they don’t belong in a discussion about science. Policy, yes. Science, no. Policy and science can intersect, but we’ll be careful not to construe one for the other. That I think is the rational thing, yes? I encourage you to try it on. I get that you were trying to be humorous, but you seem plainly in a wilderness where the right opinions on matters of science are derivative of your political point of view. Again, you (and your liberal opponents too) would do well to separate these. They don’t belong in the same basket.
2. “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick…” - You must know by now that independent audits by the AAAS, the National Science Foundation, etc, have exonerated the scientists in question of any scientific fraud, and statements that you feel comfortable attributing a nefarious connotation to aren’t what *science auditors* attribute to them. The audits indicated that this was normal scientific/mathematical speak for a handy way of handling data used to bring different kinds of data sets together sensibly. References to those audits are collected in this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
I’m going to go out on a limb here and project that this is where you’d say that the auditors are part of the imagined conspiracy where money-hungry scientists around the globe and across disciplines are pumping out manufactured data that validates warming so they can go manufacture some more, and that Nature and other peer-reviewed journals are in on the whole fiesta.
Well, I suppose that’s theoretically possible. I think a far more economical explanation is that most concur with global warming because that’s what their fact-based research indicates. After all, unlike Al Gore, Michelle Bachman, [fill in politician’s name here], scientists don’t succeed by shouting over the top of one another. Instead, they must publish findings that are subject to grueling scrutiny by other scientists who WANT to point out bad data, bad conclusions, bad thinking. They WANT to overturn the consensus. That’s what personally motivates most scientists, including some critics of the research like Richard Muller with whom the auditors seemed to agree regarding transparency, methodology, and managing professional criticism. And by that measure, it doesn’t really matter to the big picture if some unscrupulous scientists in any discipline lie and falsify data, much less that they have petty squabbles or write lame emails. What matters is what they publish and how it holds up. Period. That’s what makes the enterprise of science different from just arguing and guessing. If the process is working, bad research goes down in flames as it should. Science respecting climate is no exception, and the vast overwhelming majority of the research under review indicates that human-originated warming is a fact, and of course you know that because you are attempting to argue that all of that either doesn’t matter or must be made up. On the basis I just described, it does matter.
3.” The claim of “consensus” in the scientific community is both false and irrelevant…” Wrong and mostly wrong.
When we say consensus, we don’t mean that nobody disagrees. That’s not a useful or practical standard. In fact if the process is working as it should for a very large matter like climate change, you’d expect some variance in opinion. What is meant of course is that the majority doing the science agree. Whatever your favorite pundits say or think doesn’t have anything to do with that. This consensus matters when we have to make decisions, policy decisions in particular, because not every one of us can know every detail of what the researchers know: you have to settle for getting the gist of the thing. Now you can dust of your political bludgeon, but you still can’t use it quite yet. Why? Because what you DON’T get to do is explain away the majority opinion by saying that all or most are crooks unless you have direct evidence that most really, really are, and neither you, nor anyone that I’ve ever heard of, has credibly done that. So when it comes time to make decisions, you have the matter of fact that *most* scientists agree and far fewer dissent. That doesn’t validate anyone’s policy view. It just is what it is.
Now I said “mostly wrong” because you’ve made one point I do agree with. The majority view does not make global warming, or anything else, true. That’s good thinking and you’ll do well to stick with that. Even if everyone agrees about something, it’s a fallacy to call that evidence that the thing is true. And we can take that a step further: science around climate change isn’t fixed. Any or all of it could be discarded in the light of better evidence and should be if beter evidence comes to light. And a thinking person should be able reconsider any opinion in the light of reason. I count it desirable to change my own mind in light of better facts and really try to. I hope you do as well.
This is growing overly long, but I’ll leave you with a bit of truly friendly advice: when you use superlatives to describe someone whose point of view you don’t really know, you don’t look very reasonable to reasonable people.
360 liters x 365 days x 69.5 million people = 9.1323 trillion litters per year (aren’t you good at math?)
9.1323 trillion litters x 1.977 g/L = 18.0545571 million tons of CO2 produced by 69.5 million people in a year.
Texas registered cars and trucks produce 51 million tons of CO2 a year, which is about 2.82 times what all the voters for Obama will produce in the same time. Increasing the efficiency of the vehicles by 35% would save as much CO2 (or more) as 69.5 million people not exhaling for a year. And that’s only counting Texas… and not counting the billions of tons of CO2 spewed by the coal and natural gas power plants around the globe. For somebody criticizing science, you sure show a serious lack of knowledge and understanding of the topic. Btw, only 2.69 % of the scientists doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming, and going down… while over 2/3 of the people in the world agree with the 97%+ of the scientists, 1/5 disagree but don’t know enough, and the rest has no opinion or don’t care… Polled by the UNESCO.
Well, at least you made me laugh, that’s a healthy result. Helps me in dealing with AGW.
The rest of the article is an obvious spelling of the Ayn Rand ideology perfectly congruent with her roots as Anarcho-Marxist (Libertarianism of the XIX century) and Atheist worldview… Besides the fact of his partial African ancestry, what else you don’t like about President Obama?
Frank,
Last things first. Why would you assume that I detest Obama based on his skin color or African lineage? That is a pretty uncharitable assumption on your part, and one not based in fact or reason, since I never once mentioned or alluded to Obama’s race. I detest Obama because he is a Marxist ideologue that hold the history and values of our American heritage in contempt, and seeks to expand government power over the individual and businesses in every opportunity he can. I detest him because he uses class and racial warfare rhetoric to achieve a loyalty that his policies have not been able to generate. In short, I detest him because he is hostile the those things I hold dear. I guess the fact that one of my favorite writers is Thomas Sowell, or that my favorite Supreme Court Justice is Clarence Thomas, or that I love Herman Cain and am glad to see his candidacy excelling…I guess all that is irrelevant since those guys are conservatives, and there for not “authentically” black, huh?
As far as the global warming issue, I glad that at the end you (seem) to realize that my challenge regarding global warming was tongue-in-cheek. And that section of the column was never meant to be an in-depth analysis of the issue. The topic of the article was the bureaucratic tyranny of the EPA in enforcing regulations that could not muster enough votes to pass the Congress. As far as global warming is concerned, I am not concerned about it beyond the fact that it is a manufactured crisis giving government an excuse to usurp more power and more taxpayer dollars (another in a long list of manufactured crises, like the “Coming Ice Age” of the 1970’s, the population bomb of Ehrlich, AIDS…which it was once claimed would wipe out a huge swath of humanity, but which we now know is almost exclusivily limited to people engaging in dangerous sexual behaviors, or using drugs). CO2 is a natural byproduct of human respiration, and the lifeblood of the photosynthetic process, which means that plant life will thrive and we will have more arable land if CO2 levels increase by the small percentages we are talking about. I’d be much more concerned about NOX emissions and the like, substances that can actually be harmful.
As far as the UNESCO polling, sorry, but that holds no weight with me. The UN is worse than worthless, it is dangerous, and I consider it an embarrassment and a pox upon America’s good name that we continue to participate in that vile organization. We’ve also seen repeatedly that the U.N. is a political organization with political goals, not an unbiased organization that can be trusted to act impartially. I give about as much credence to their polling as I would to one released by MoveOn.org.
Thanks for the entertainment though.
Actually, the challenge is for conservatives who have consistently denied the reality of global climate change and someday soon will have some tall explaining to do. This has absolutely nothing to do with “an intentional effort to replace America’s free-enterprise system with a democratic-socialist style, centrally-planned, government run economy.” It has everything to do with whether or not our species will continue to survive on a hospitable planet.
Bill,
“Denied the reality”? Really? So, what, we are like holocaust deniers now? Surely, surely you have a better rebuttal than that. Surely that is not the best you can come up with. In point of fact, I know of no conservative that denies the reality of global warming. The Earth has been warming and cooling for millennia, long before man existed and will continue to do so long after man appeared, independent of how many road trips we make or don’t make. What conservatives question is the sanity of wrecking our economy by implementing such unreasonably stringent emissions standards that we’d be unable to generate enough power to maintain current standards of living, much less deal with growth (and, according to the 2009 testimony of Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA director, before a House subcommittee taking testimony from experts on the impact of the bill, even if we fully implemented all regulatory restrictions as outlined in the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, at BEST we could expect to reduce the global temperature by less than one half of one degree Fahrenheit).
The tree-huggers and unwashed hippies can go off the grid if they want, eating granola and alfalfa sprouts, bathing in streams and using only candles made of hemp wick and coagulated vegetable oil, but don’t use force of government to make the rest of us pay homage to the prophets of the leftist religion of anthropogenic global warming. Such nonsense is not reality, and if it were then the purveyors of this fraud would not have to falsify data and intentionally mislead the people.
Actually, you’re more like those who still believe that the earth is flat. Your unquestioning belief in free-market principles blinds you to scientific facts and the practical limits of economic development. The laws of physics have nothing to do with one’s political persuasion. Conservatives and liberals will both be “off the grid” when the earth’s atmosphere becomes too hot to support agriculture and rising sea level submerge the major cities of the world. It’s actually a matter of your grandchildrens’ survival, but maybe you don’t care about that.
Bill,
I appreciate you taking time away from cleaning the altar at your shrine for the Omniscient Al-Goracle and the Temple of Anthropogenic Global Warming. As for my belief in free market principles, it is precisely because I have studied the free market versus command-and-control economies that I have faith that, while imperfect, the free market is the best avenue we have to generate wealth and end poverty while man is an imperfect creature. From the sounds of it, you prefer the use of government force to determine the allocation of resources. Why does that not surprise me?
As far as your unadulterated faith in AGW despite the well documented and numerous examples of scientific and political fraud, well, that speaks more to your intelligence than it does to mine. When you finally come around to embracing rational thought though, get back in touch with me because I have some shocking revelations for you regarding Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
The science of global warming is is implicitly clear. What is even more alarming is that the science is becoming even more refined- and the tolerances for error reduced to nothing. All one has to to is look at Geological records of the planets distant past- with C02 at 400ppm.
It amazes me sites like this, that supposedly advocate freedom, open markets, and innovation are doing everything to destroy that American ideal, with their misrepresentations of reality, out of control greed, and refusal to see that change is inevitable. Only this time messing with the planets atmosphere as we are now, could destroy America, and the planetary civilization.
I appreciate your sensible thought and sound research. Personally, I am agree with you. For higher money grants and personal interest, Environmental Protection Agencies are advertising global warming issue all around the world. It is better to find a solution of this global warming problem rather than creating a panic among the local masses.
Peter,
The “science” of global warming is many things, but “implicitly clear” is not one of them. Global warming hysterics like to cherry-pick the data which supports their conclusions (even when that data is “massaged” or outright falsified) and then ignore contradictory data and mock or demonize those that disagree. Anyone that disagrees is labeled a “denier” or a fool or a shill for the oil companies or some other such nonsense. The dismiss such inconvenient truths as the fact that we have been in a decade long cooling trend, or the fact that the East Anglia CRU/UNIPCC has been exposed for falsifying data. The fact that warming hysterics still cling to their narrative in the face of such facts just shows that it is as much of a cult as the most bizarre religious sect.
Thanks, Spanx! It’s funny how the commentary from this article has devolved into a heated debate on global warming, when the article was really about the EPA usurping extra-constitutional power and enforcing policy through regulatory fiat, and in the process eroding individual liberty.
Scientific consensus on global warming?
There is according to this source:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
Joe,
As I stated earlier, I am not impressed by a long list of scientists that believe in global warming. Many of these scientists have no background in meteorology or climatology, and indeed, a list that a previous “warmer” sent me, upon further research, included “scientists” in the field of psychology, sociology and the like. Again, I’m just not that impressed, and tend to look at the facts.
But if you want to trade lists of scientists, then here are a few highly respected “deniers”…
Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute: “It is my professional opinion that there is no evidence at all for catastrophic global warming.It is likely that global temperatures will rise a little, much as IPCC predicts, but there is a growing body of evidence that the errant behavior of the Sun, may cause some cooling in the foreseeable future…The political dichotomy about climate change is fueled by gross exaggerations and simplifications on both sides of the fence.”
William Happer, physicist specializing in optics and spectroscopy, Princeton University: “All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it’s not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide”.
Fred Singer, American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia; first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service: “The greenhpuse effect is real. However, the effect is minute, insignificant, and very difficult to detect…It’s not automatically true that warming is bad, I happen to believe that warming is good, and so do many economists.”
In fact, here is a whole list of prominent scientists that once believed in anthropogenic global warming, but have reversed their positions and now are AGW skeptics (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&Content…).
So you see, I tend to be more than a little suspicious of any group that has to use ostracism, bullying, intimidation, obfuscation and misdirection to try and convince people of the legitimacy of their claims. And those that have bought this fraud hook, line and sinker, in spite of a mountain of contradictory evidence, don’t exactly make a persuasive case.
Hit a chord? Not really. It’s just that it takes about as much prodding to get me to debate as it does to get a pig in the mud. I enjoy it. I enjoy it more when the opposition is intelligent and offers more than blanket derision and name-calling (the “emotional ejaculations”comment was pretty weak, so I’ll let that ride), so I appreciate that from you.
1. Again, as I pointed out earlier, those that have commented on this article have taken a tangential, tongue-in-cheek excerpt and blown it up as if it were the main point, which it was not. The original point was concerning the EPA’s abuse of power, usurping constitiional rights in the name of protecting the environment, while instituting policy by regulatory fiat that was unable to make it through the legislature. We also share the belief that politics doesn’t change scientific facts, and therefore don’t belong in a scientific discussion. However, maybe I am not as good a writer as I presupposed, because it should have been abundantly obvious to even the most casual reader that my article was explicitly political, discussing policy specifically, and never intended to be a scientific paper for peer review.
2. Not being a climatologist myself, I freely admit that when we delve into the nuanced minutiae of the science I am quickly in over my head. Therefore, I have to rely on the synopsized commentary of those that are. From the Wikipedia article you referenced, I quote the following: “The Muir Russell report stated, however, “We do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged at the end of the investigations.” Granted I am just a layman, but that sounds more like CYA than anything else, with the telling comment at the end that assures us the “consensus” is still intact. On a hunch, I Googled “Penn state+global warming research funding”, and one of the first articles talked about the investigation by PSU into the hacked e-mail allegations. It said that 3 of 4 charges against Mann were dismissed, but that they recommended further study on the fourth charge that his methods “deviated from accepted practices” of the scientific community. (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/05/penn-state-probe-michael-mann-…). It also points out that Mann had brought several million in research grants to PSU…although I am sure that their findings were in no way colored by that fact.
3. When “warmers” talk about their beloved “consensus”, they portray the “deniers” as either right-wing ideologues, dupes, or as being bought and paid for by fossil fuel companies, and act as if there are only a handful of skeptics and therefore they should be ignored (or imprisoned or killed, according to several prominent scientists and politicians commenting on the subject). Howver, such is not the case. For example:
At a global warming conference organized by the Heartland Institute, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, arguably the leading expert on the topic, spoke against the politics driving the issue, and the shoddy science used to justify the policy (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4990704/…).
There is also the testimonies and reports of over 700 of the world’s leading scientists who debunk the mythology behind global warming (http://hatch.senate.gov/public/_files/USSenateEPWMinorityReport.pdf). This group includes Nobel Prize Winner for
Physics, Ivar Giaever, who said that “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” It also includes UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist who said Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” It also includes U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA, who said “It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.”
You’ll also see that this report has numerous links to peer-reviewed research in support of their positions.
Then we have nearly 32,000 scientists that have signed a petition urging the U.S. government to reject the international climate treaties under consideration, because there is “no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greehouse gases is causing, or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Over 9,000 of these scientists hold PhDs. Granted, only a small portion of thse scientists hold degrees in specifically related fields like climatology and astrophysics, but since we have the same dynamic with those in support of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, then this petition should carry as much weight as the others.
You also bring up an important point regarding applying science to the implementation of policy. Let’s assume, for the purpose of of this question, that there is a national consensus that man’s activities lead to global warming. Then what? The policies proposed to date give us all pain and no gain. During a 2009 hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee regarding the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, EPA Director Lisa Jackson admitted that, despite the trillions of dollars in long-term compliance costs to U.S. businesses and taxpayers, even if the law was fully complied with, she “believes that essential parts of the chart are that the U.S. action alone will not impact CO2 levels.”
Anyway, I hope I’ve offered enough compelling evidence in support of my points. I think that we have some opportunity for reasoned debate here on both sides. As far as my use of superlatives regarding those I disagree with, I tend not to use them as long as the opponent doesn’t, and as long as we are keeping the debate in the intellectual realm. But when I have accusations and insults directed at me, I can mix it up with the best of them. I do this as much for entertainment as enlightenment, so I can amuse myself by poking sticks in the eyes of those that poked me. Obviously I would not do that in a more academic, public setting, but this is the blogosphere, so I can let my hair down a little, so to speak.
I hope I’m not flattering myself too much when I say that it seems to me that we’re both capable of speaking in reasonable terms :) And I’ll acknowledge at the outset that the OP was intended to be farcical, and that it is I (among others I suppose) who singled out the global warming piece for discussion.
I’ll reiterate what I mentioned in my last post, that for consensus to be meaningful it need not mean complete unanimity, just general, majority agreement among scientists, and in a practical sense it means that most scientists have moved on from the question of “whether” there is warming and onto how this warming explains or clarifies other data. I’m familiar with the Senate Minority report list you mention and it has the significant problem of having only about 20% of the signatories published in the field of climate science. Still, if the intent is to point out that there are some who have published who dissent, that’s fair, true, relevant, and useful to the conversation. More than that, one can (and should) go further and say that there’s also some variance of opinion based on the research on how severe the problem is, what the expected outcomes will be, what effects are observed now, etc.
But none of this really changes the fact that it’s still the view of the great majority. We know that this of course could change in light of better evidence, that having a majority viewpoint doesn’t make a thing true, etc. But we still have to take that fact on its own terms and there’s no evidence of pandemic scientific fraud.
To me, what seems to be happening is the very usual, positively antique situation where a scientific finding is askew of some people’s values and beliefs (or rather they think it is), and those same people then trying to cope with that dissonance. My current read on it is that many/most liberal-minded Americans who are more comfortable with proscription that includes governmental action are at ease with the finding, and that many American political conservatives who are not at ease with governmental action, well, aren’t. Incidentally, I don’t think either of those reactions are easily justified. Given the way people seem to behave everywhere, there’s nothing to say that in some other case the shoe could be on the other foot and we’d have much the same situation, but in reverse. So I’m not interested in blame, and in this case would really prefer if liberals would give their opposition some breathing room.
That said, I’d also like to see more conservatives rise to the occasion and work on initiatives that are consistent with their values that they feel could really remedy the warming problem. As an example, I was in college in the Clinton era and briefly dabbled in Libertarian politics on campus. At the time Libertarians were bandying about the notion of cap and trade as a market-based solution for air (as a public good), though this was actually more oriented to pollution generally than carbon per se. Now, I’m not saying that’s what I’m recommending or that it’s a good idea, bad idea, or otherwise. I just mean that it would be nice to see more effort consistent with anthropogenic warming as a scientific given rather than hoping (against hope) that the minority scientific view turns out to be the correct one. It’s worth pointing out that delay means losing the political initiative in any case, so there’s real incentive to do this.
Sadly, I think that irrespective of political point of view, the current direction of the science seems to suggest we’ve lost too much time already; that some severe effects are probably unavoidable, and that effects like arctic methane feedback from warming could overtake the anthropogenic greenhouse output. Then the question becomes not what we can do to prevent it, but rather what we can do to survive it. There’ll be plenty of disagreement on that too, but it will probably be a much more uncomfortable one. If that is to be, my hope is that the next time around there’s a laser-like focus on the science, and that the solutions proceed from that.
I’ll note here that I’m generalizing when I talk about conservatives and liberals on matters of anthropogenic warming. There’s definitely a spectrum of views there too.
It does indeed appear that we can have a reasonable conversation on the topic, even though we may come to different conclusions. For my part, there are a few glaring problems with the AGW-as-fact contingent. Near the top is that the basis for policy-making has been computer modeling, a method that, over a period of decades, has produced theories and projections that are not really close to the results of actual data once the time horizon of the projections is reached. The problem with computer modeling is that it is subject to the GIGO effect…Garbage In, Garbage Out. The climate is such a massively complex, interrelated system that our currently methodology of developing accurate inputs is woefully inadequate. I point once again to that fact that, less than 40 years ago, we were living on fear of the “Coming Ice Age”, which never materialized. There is also the fact that, despite a significant increase of CO2 output over the last two decades, newer data analysis reveals that we are in a cooling trend that has already exceeded a decade. How do we explain the variance? There is also the fact that the “solutions” proposed to a problem that many (including some very influential scientists at the top of their fields in climatology, meteorology, astrophysics, etc.) don’t even believe is a problem will cost us literally trillions of dollars, wrecking our economy, while producing virtually no statistically significant impact (according to Lisa Jackson, EPA Director).
Anyway, it has been a pleasure engaging you. If only all commentators were as reasonable, intelligent and respectful as you’ve been here, maybe we could make some real progress. I’d also like to point out that, even though I am a conservative, I agree that we need to do all within our power to be good stewards of our environment. We all want clean water and clean air, so that is not really in question (conservatives don’t want to live in a dirty world any more than liberals). The question is, how do we achieve those ends in the most cost-effective way, and do so while minimizing the burden on individuals and businesses, and maintaining maximum freedom. Stories about the EPA of late (such as the requirement that dairy farmers file a response plan with the EPA to deal with milk spills, since milk contains trace amounts of oil, or the current attempt to regulate hay dust on farms). Regulatory tyranny is the least desirable and least effective response.
I think you’re right to indicate the complexity of the systems being modeled. No one knows this better than the scientists who are working on it. It takes a lot of brain power and effort to make good models. It’s worth pointing out I think that in the end that much of the enterprise of science is the effort to produce models that make better predictions (with scientific theories being the pinacle of that achievement).
As far as cooling/70’s: there again we have the problem of popular science vs. peer-reviewed literature, and there was nothing like a consensus view of global cooling; in fact there was scarcely any peer reviewed literature suggesting cooling at all. There was, however, this article from Time magazine from 1974 that was much repeated:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
I remember my 6th grade history teacher repeating the same content in an off-handed manner.
There of course would be no end if we kept going, so I’ll leave it there. Thanks for taking the time to talk it through to a good stopping place. I do appreciate your intelligence and reasonableness.
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