Members lug Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 its simple. If there is untold mounts of money to be made supporting a public policy position, the science will support it, because the great majority of today's scientific research is funded by tax dollars. Like everything else, it's driven by profit, as sure as the Iraq and Vietnam wars were. We made a profit off of Vietnam?....COOL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Tim in WV Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 All the defense contractors did - same as now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Crescent Seven Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Dec. 23, 2006:Feb. 5, 2007: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lug Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 All the defense contractors did - same as now. But WE paid them, so WE didn't really do it for the money, unless you are suggesting that arms maufacturers "made up" the war to make money off of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zamfir Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Almost three-quarters of a degree in 100 years. That's insane. Get back to us when it goes up another 1 C in far less time, and agricultural production / biomes worldwide is/are massively shifting in ways you may not like... Even a +0.5 C change risks being very uncomfortable worldwide - and the US is just lucky in that our average temp change is lower than the global average change.What many people don't realize is that it doesn't take much of an average temperature change to {censored} up a lot of economic and resource geography on which we depend well beyond our borders...JVH's point is worth reiterating. One data point for one day/month/season in one locale is hardly indicative of a trend, which is why I have to chuckle when you guys post this year's snow dumpings in Denver or wherever...(and, incidentally, testifies to some turbulent swings whose amplitude may be very well connected to global warming...). It's the trend in *averages* over much wider areas that matters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted February 5, 2007 CMS Author Share Posted February 5, 2007 I'd be much more concerned about the use of fossil fuels in China than I would in the US and Europe. Did they sign the Kyoto agreement? No reason for them not to....Kyoto would have had no ill effect on any country but the US. Imagine that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted February 5, 2007 CMS Author Share Posted February 5, 2007 It's the trend in *averages* over much wider areas that matters. Which was 0.75C in the last 100 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jazz Ad Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Like it or not, .75 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Fireball_73 Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Yeah so thats all of Denmark flooded and a large part of South East England... (Just the two nearest big ones I could think of) Besides why are you Americans worried about the Chineese not signing Kyoto when you haven't joined up? Eh? Answer that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators ThudMaker Posted February 5, 2007 Moderators Share Posted February 5, 2007 Besides why are you Americans worried about the Chineese not signing Kyoto when you haven't joined up? Eh? Answer that.Most of us aren't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members chris-dax Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 WSJ Opinion Online Climate of Opinion The latest U.N. report shows the "warming" debate is far from settled. Monday, February 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST Last week's headlines about the United Nations' latest report on global warming were typically breathless, predicting doom and human damnation like the most fervent religious evangelical. Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled. The document that caused such a stir was only a short policy report, a summary of the full scientific report due in May. Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue, the summary was long on dire predictions. The press reported the bullet points, noting that this latest summary pronounced with more than "90% confidence" that humans have been the main drivers of warming since the 1950s, and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would result. More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. - the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming. Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. - similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third. Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC's previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It's worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel's work. The Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example. U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001--in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant. The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003--which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise. Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming. All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted. While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems--AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example--whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change. The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009625 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RSBro Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 FWIW, my parents are in Hawaii right now on business and they're reporting record lows at night... 60 degrees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members T. Alan Smith Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Most of us aren't. If they're legnthening my summers, then here's to them! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Like it or not, .75 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ModmanQ6 Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 My first trip to Chicago to meet my wife's relatives was on a day that was -13f with a wind chill of -50f. When we got to the airport I asked where they were, assuming we were being picked up - wrong! We took the L and got off at a bus station where we had to wait outside for 15 minutes for the bus, then walk 2 blocks with our luggage once we got to our stop. I had on a wool sport coat with a down vest and a Kangol driving cap. I thought I had frostbite on my face and hands. I've never felt cold like that since... I feel for you, but at least you can dress properly for the weather... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Crescent Seven Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Besides why are you Americans worried about the Chineese not signing Kyoto when you haven't joined up? Eh? Answer that.We haven't joined up because it gives exemptions to 2 "developing" nations that have 3 times the population of any of the other top 10 countries on the list, and places most of the burdens for reducing emissions on the US and a couple of other nations. We're not the only ones that didn't ratify it for these reasons.Kyoto basically lets China and India off the hook, even though those nations have some of the worst environmental records of any countries. If you look at the treaty from the US's perspective, it's design and intent are basically to hogtie and handicap the leading economies so that developing nations can "catch up", and what better way to do it than by disguising it as an Environmental Impact Treaty?C7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Fireball_73 Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Make a new one then! America could at least make it's own deal to at least show some principle or will. Just because GW said "Global warming is happening" means jack all, saying you are going to reduce targets means jack all, because you can change your targets. It's gotta have something solid. Kyoto is at least a start. Anyway... what was the Smog like in London/Glasgow/any other big city in the 18/1900? Although the "Developing countries" get to pollute and should try and cut down, they are doing the exact same thing Britain and the USA did in the past. You cannot deny that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Anyway... what was the Smog like in London/Glasgow/any other big city in the 18/1900? Although the "Developing countries" get to pollute and should try and cut down, they are doing the exact same thing Britain and the USA did in the past. You cannot deny that. No one denies that...That's the very reason why an agreement that doesn't require them to change is unacceptable to many... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zamfir Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Which was 0.75C in the last 100 years. Except, from the World Metereological Organization...: GENEVA, 14 December (WMO) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members thelurker Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 A few simple statements. 1) I think reducing polution is good. 2) I do not believe the hype that the end is near. 3) Kyoto is a joke. Not one of the benighted nations that adopted Kyoto have met their targets for the last two years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators ThudMaker Posted February 5, 2007 Moderators Share Posted February 5, 2007 Make a new one then! America could at least make it's own deal to at least show some principle or will. Just because GW said "Global warming is happening" means jack all, saying you are going to reduce targets means jack all, because you can change your targets. It's gotta have something solid. Kyoto is at least a start.Since you don't live in America that's easy for you to say. Frankly those of us Americans with common sense are tired of the world forgetting the vaseline when you try to shove something up our ass. Kyoto wasn't a start. It was a burden on our economy and our businesses. You don't like it that we haven't signed it? Why don't you tell your left wing nut job negotiators to actually make an agreement that is fair, and we might consider it. Kyoto isn't even a place to start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 And oddly, China's auto fuel emissions standards are way the hell above ours, and going up.Ergo, at least some part of their policy leaders take emissions more seriously than we do. It be a more convincing point if auto emissions were China's main source of air pollution. It isn't close. Cars are a minor factor compared to the industrial production that drives China's economy (and their trade surplus over other countries)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Crescent Seven Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 3) Kyoto is a joke. Not one of the benighted nations that adopted Kyoto have met their targets for the last two yearsBut boy, if the United States had signed Kyoto and not met it's target, the whole {censored}ing world would have been in an outrage over it.C7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zamfir Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 It be a more convincing point if auto emissions were China's main source of air pollution. It isn't close. Cars are a minor factor compared to the industrial production that drives China's economy (and their trade surplus over other countries)... I'll concede that, but they're working, with mixed success but undeniably significant and multi-pronged effort, to tax coal, shift off of it to gas, hydro, and a little nuclear, and generally reduce energy and carbon consumption per dollar. They have to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rippin' Robin Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 This matters because C02 concentrations correlate *very* closely with average global temperature. Ah, but correlation is not the same as causality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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