Science

[Nerdanel]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Is the baby cute?

XD A cute baby? *laughs ass off*

[Nautipus]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture06614.html


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ature06614.pdf


http://www.livescience.com/animals/0...st-animal.html


http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...080320?sp=true


Lookie, lookie.

[inked]

http://www.american.com/archive/2008...new-dissidents

Science politicized or real science.......................

or

reporting politicized or real reporting................

YOU decide.

[Earniel]

Too generalised reporting. The article presents Gore's as the only accepted climate change view point, as to only focus on the political side, making people believe the science behind it is lacking. It's also written to sound more sensational. Catastrophism? *sniggers* I dunno, but I thought it was rather obvious before that people who agree the climate is changing, but disagree on the strenght or the combination of factors, are not climate change denialists.

[Jonathan]

How diligently the author tries to victimize the climate change "deniers"!

You know the media - Journalists that report scientific stories unscientifically, unscientific stories reported scientifically etc. Depending on how you value the occurrence of opposing views and scientific reporting in a newspaper, and how you weigh both things against one another, you can make an argument that the climate change skeptics get too little media coverage and argue that they get too much of it. There's no real answer.

I'll take on a more scientific approach and say climate change skeptics don't deserve much attention in the media, simply because they can't be taken seriously. Denying climate change isn't enough. Questioning the IPCC and other climatologists' data is also not enough. If the skeptics are to be taken seriously, they need to be able to put forth solid and scientific arguments as to why the majority of the scientific community is wrong and why the climate models are misleading. To do that properly, they need to be well-versed in the current climate change theories. Yelling "climate scientists haven't thought about natural causes!" when they in fact have, strips you of much of your credibility.

In my mind, any credible climate change skeptic, who can correctly and scientifically explain his or her point of view, should get the necessary media coverage. I don't think the mainstream press would keep such a person out in the cold (even though the author of inked's article seems to think so).
However the common man climate change skeptic, with "proof" that wouldn't last a scientific valuation for even five minutes, shouldn't figure in the media. At least not to a great extent.

[Nerdanel]

Well said, Jon.

[inked]

catastrophism = punctuated equilibrium model?

Smooth gradual uniform evolution versus the periodic die-offs and restarts?

You might not be old enough to remember when plate tectonics was controversial or when meteor/comet/asteroid impacts as likely cause of extinction was pooh-poohed.

It could be that the current assessors are on to something. Or it could turn out like the predicted global cooling back in the '60s.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I grant you.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

It could be that the current assessors are on to something. Or it could turn out like the predicted global cooling back in the '60s.

Which, as has been pointed out over and over, never happened (the prediction, that is, not the cooling)

To veterans of the Climate Wars, the old 1970s global cooling canard - "How can we believe climate scientists about global warming today when back in the 1970s they told us an ice age was imminent?" - must seem like a never-ending game of Whack-a-mole. One of us (WMC) has devoted years to whacking down the mole (see here, here and here, for example), while the other of us (JF) sees the mole pop up anew in his in box every time he quotes contemporary scientific views regarding climate change in his newspaper stories.
.......
During the period we analyzed, climate science was very different from what you see today. There was far less integration among the various sub-disciplines that make up the enterprise. Remote sensing, integrated global data collection and modeling were all in their infancy. But our analysis nevertheless showed clear trends in the focus and conclusions the researchers were making. Between 1965 and 1979 we found (see table 1 for details):

* 7 articles predicting cooling
* 44 predicting warming
* 20 that were neutral

In other words, during the 1970s, when some would have you believe scientists were predicting a coming ice age, they were doing no such thing. The dominant view, even then, was that increasing levels of greenhouse gases were likely to dominate any changes we might see in climate on human time scales.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/03/

[GrayMouser]

Yeah, I remember- in junior high school, we were still being taught the land-bridge theory, while something called "continental drift" was mentioned as a hypothesis held by a few crackpots.

And of course, the great punk-eek wars, or as one less-than-impressed colleague of Gould and Eldridge referred to it, "evolution by jerks".

One noticeable difference was the lack of politicization of the issue; no-one was denouncing 'liberal tectonics' or 'politically-correct punctuationists', nor were major corporations or think-tanks offering bounties for articles opposing them, or organising "scientific" conferences with free stays at luxury hotels for attending elected officials.

It's like the creationist/IDers. Wegener, the main propounder of continental drift, died on the Greenland ice cap doing research to advance his theory- he didn't run for local school boards or send out pro-drift colouring books.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

It's like the creationist/IDers. Wegener, the main propounder of continental drift, died on the Greenland ice cap doing research to advance his theory- he didn't run for local school boards or send out pro-drift colouring books.

Okay. This must be one of the greatest quotes EVER written on this topic.
*awards points*

[inked]

Hmm, 1960's versus 1970s. Nice decade shift in your reply. Is that like climate change shift?

Did you read any public school textbooks on the matter that were used in the 1960s to see the assessment of tectonics?

You can go back to the 1930's for another cycle of the climate thingy if you like.

Also, as a life-long afficianado of SF (more the "hard" type, though not above the fabulous space operas!), I can tell you that the 1950s scenario of frozen earth revealed by a persons dreaming of global warming and incineration of the surface of the earth was a typos IF NOT teeth-cutting necessity for authors.

But I forget, there was no "before Al Gore" to speak of.
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Dr. Jim Renwick, a lead author of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, admitted to the New Zealand Herald in June 2007, “Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don’t expect to do terrifically well.”

A leading scientific skeptic of global warming fears, meteorologist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands’ Royal National Meteorological Institute, took the critique of climate models that predict future doom a step further. Tennekes wrote on February 28, 2007, “I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate models are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society.”

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania noted “for most of Earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler,” Giegengack said according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. The article continued, “[Giegengack] says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct linear way.” (Emphasis added)

Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball explained that one of the reasons climate models fail 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.

New data is revealing what may perhaps be the ultimate inconvenient truth for climate doomsayers:

Global warming stopped in 1998.

Dr. Nigel Calder, co-author with physicist Henrik Svensmark of the 2007 book “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory on Climate Change,” explained in July 2007:

“In reality, global temperatures have stopped rising. Data for both the surface and the lower air show no warming since 1999. That makes no sense by the hypothesis of global warming driven mainly by CO2, because the amount of CO2 in the air has gone on increasing. But the fact that the Sun is beginning to neglect its climatic duty – of battling away the cosmic rays that come from ‘the chilling stars’ – fits beautifully with this apparent end of global warming.”

from the US senate committee on Environment and Public Works
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.c...9-9bdd978fb3cd

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And my personal favorite for scientific accuracy......

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
--Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory), Discover Magazine, Oct 1989

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

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Hey, what's a little making up scary scenarios between friends, Huh? Or ignoring our doubts about our data or techniques between 'scientists'? And NEVER, NEVER, NEVER would we bend the balance of "being effective and being honest" in the direction of lying (unless funding was involved, of course)!

I must say that on the balance the amount of fundamentalist faith has certainly increased here on the 'Moot. I'm not altogether sure that's a good thing as the same sort of easy believism drove certain Russian scientists under Stalin and others under Das Furhrer to document very questionable results. But, alas, that's moving back to the 1920s and 30s. We couldn't possibly learn anything from that!

[Grey_Wolf]

Do u thing that Piezo-electricity is the powersource of the future - that is painting the cars and other conveyances with a electric-generating paint where the el. is generated by the sheer flow of airspeed around a vehicle?

[inked]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...009760,00.html

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.................................... ..........

[Insidious Rex]

Don’t we already have a global warming thread? And I know we have that Gore thread so why are we choking up this cool science thread with yet more NON-science denial clap trap about how theres no global warming exactly?

Originally Posted by inked

Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania noted “for most of Earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler,”

This is a geologists trick that most lay people would not notice. The fact is “most of earths history” consists of 6 billion years including some pretty damn hot (as in molten) eras when the earth was young. Our main concern is what has happened in the mere few million years during which homo sapiens have occupied this turf? Have WE had some effect on this environment? And all signs point to yes. Semantic geologist word games aside…

Furthermore, I think the notion that this is NOT the hottest the earth has ever been has already been admitted to and addressed. But the point that we have not seen such rapid increases in temperature in the records before should be the focus here and the cause of some alarm not denial.

The article continued, “[Giegengack] says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct linear way.” (Emphasis added)

Ha ha! Tell that to Venus Prof. Giegengack and go back to your corporate funded geology “research” thanks.

It is very well known that whenever we see increases in green house gasses throughout history we see a corresponding increase in temperature so this statement is just completely ludicrous. Its one thing to argue man isn’t at fault for the increase in green house gasses (slightly less ludicrous) but its another thing entirely to say Hi Im a scientist and I believe carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doesn’t cause warming.

New data is revealing what may perhaps be the ultimate inconvenient truth for climate doomsayers:

Global warming stopped in 1998.

HA HA! That’s even funnier. Then I would love to have them explain exactly why 8 out of the last 10 years have been the hottest years on record. Doesn’t really seem to jive with that statement does it…

Its stunning what passes for “science” these days… Or at least what some people attempt to pass as science based on their political point of view and/or corporate allegiance.

[inked]

Science is only science if it fits your definition, IR? Or merely the politically correct view of science?

But, look at the bright side, you get to hone your arguments for or against various hypotheses. That seems rather scientific. Good training for assessing what is data and what is not and what is logical hypothesis and what is not.

The argument ad hominem against geologists doesn't work for me, I'm afraid.

What of the claim global warming stopped in 1998?

Doesn't cause warming in a linear way is not = to doesn't cause warming.

Your local warming proves global warming, does it? Interesting. But what of average temperature, oceanic cooling, et cetera?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

Hmm, 1960's versus 1970s. Nice decade shift in your reply. Is that like climate change shift?

Between 1965 and 1979 we found (see table 1 for details):

* 7 articles predicting cooling
* 44 predicting warming
* 20 that were neutral

Last I checked the years 1965-1969 were considered part of the 1960s.

Or if you could reference the Ice Age scenarios coming out in the scientific literature in the years 1960-1964....

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Okay. This must be one of the greatest quotes EVER written on this topic.
*awards points*

Thank you, thank you....this is a totally unexpected honour, but I just happen to have this 12-page acceptance speech in my pocket....

Seriously though, unlike ID creationism, there are respected scientists in the field who are skeptical about the level of global warming, as inked points out.

However, though they might be right, they are in a very small minority among climatologists.

Most of GW denialism is driven by ideology fuelled by energy corporation money.

And, yes, this should be continued in the GW thread.

[Grey_Wolf]

What GW thread - what denialism? care to inform me?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

Thank you, thank you....this is a totally unexpected honour, but I just happen to have this 12-page acceptance speech in my pocket....

Seriously though, unlike ID creationism, there are respected scientists in the field who are skeptical about the level of global warming, as inked points out.

However, though they might be right, they are in a very small minority among climatologists.

Most of GW denialism is driven by ideology fuelled by energy corporation money.

And, yes, this should be continued in the GW thread.

Well, if scientists didn't differ, we would call them 'priests'. With any luck, they're contrarian by nature.

In other venues, I've been arguing the merits of being "locavore". I know a lot of people who are ardently devoted to this as a lifestyle...with, in my opinion, indifferent success, because farming is more difficult than most suburban people believe.

I'm not sold on a mission to eat locally because I believe that there are social justice concerns that support international trade. And the numbers make me

LAUGH OUT LOUD.

But there are certainly issues the locavores raise that are worthy of consideration.

I'm somewhat the same with climate change. The upside of leaving my lights on when I'm not in a room is pretty subtle for me. Likewise operating a car that gets miserable mileage. So if the climate change deniers are right, what have I sacrificed by being a little more thoughtful in my energy usage?

And I would withdraw governmental support right now from idiots in wetlands and floodplains. Maybe they won't be underwater in 20 years from global warming. But there are plenty of reasons not to have oceanfront property in hurricane areas, and if they want to ignore those reasons they should do so entirely at their own risk.

[inked]

I'm with Grey Wolf on this one. Where's the GW thread? Is that an acknowledgement it's not science?