Senate Climate Change Vote

[AUDub 11,147]

http://hockeyschtick...97-what-is.html

May 26, 2014 7:13 p.m. ET THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Last week Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the "crippling consequences" of climate change. "Ninety-seven percent of the world's scientists," he added, "tell us this is urgent."

Where did Mr. Kerry get the 97% figure? Perhaps from his boss, President Obama, who tweeted on May 16 that "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous." Or maybe from NASA, which posted (in more measured language) on its website, "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.

One frequently cited source for the consensus is a 2004 opinion essay published in Science magazine by Naomi Oreskes, a science historian now at Harvard. She claimed to have examined abstracts of 928 articles published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.

Ms. Oreskes's definition of consensus covered "man-made" but left out "dangerous"—and scores of articles by prominent scientists such as Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Sherwood Idso and Patrick Michaels, who question the consensus, were excluded. The methodology is also flawed. A study published earlier this year in Naturenoted that abstracts of academic papers often contain claims that aren't substantiated in the papers.

Another widely cited source for the consensus view is a 2009 articlein "Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union" by Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, a student at the University of Illinois, and her master's thesis adviser Peter Doran. It reported the results of a two-question online survey of selected scientists. Mr. Doran and Ms. Zimmerman claimed "97 percent of climate scientists agree" that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.

The survey's questions don't reveal much of interest. Most scientists who are skeptical of catastrophic global warming nevertheless would answer "yes" to both questions. The survey was silent on whether the human impact is large enough to constitute a problem. Nor did it include solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists or astronomers, who are the scientists most likely to be aware of natural causes of climate change.

The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.

I'll see your attack on the consensus from a well known denialist rag and raise you two from two well known "alarmist" rags.

WSJ’s shameful climate denial: The scientific consensus is not a myth

97% of scientists agree that man-made climate change is happening, and a transparent Op-Ed fails to argue otherwise

Climate change is a tricky subject to talk about: It’s a large, complex scientific issue that’s both difficult to grasp in full and extremely important for the public to understand. In our shorthand for making sense of it, one statistic is often thrown about: 97 percent of scientists agree that man-made climate change is happening. Yet a big, impressive-looking Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal asserts the number is a “myth.” WSJ’s claim is wrong, of course, but where its authors fail to debunk a popular meme, they also manage to make a much more insidious, and radical, argument.

First things first, we should be extremely skeptical of any argument this article is trying to make, even despite its appearance in the hallowed pages of the Journal. It’s bylined, after all, by two prominent climate deniers: The first, Joseph Bast, is identified as the president of the Koch-affiliated Heartland Institute, a veritable machine of climate denial, with the implicit mission statement of sowing confusion and dissent about accepted science. (For another standout example of Bast’s opinion writing, try this 1998 editorial asserting that smoking, in moderation, has “few, if any, adverse health effects.”) The Op-Ed’s other author is Roy Spencer, “a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite” and official Heartland expert. Spencer’s academic credentials, a rarity among climate deniers, lend weight to his arguments despite the fact that both his work and financial motivations have been repeatedly called into question. Bast and Spencer are motivated to debunk the 97 percent “myth” because they have a vested interest, via their affiliation with Heartland, in getting the public to believe that the scientists are a lot less certain about the reality of man-made climate change than they actually are.

The 97 percent figure, as Bast and Spencer acknowledge, comes from a series of independent surveys aimed at quantifying the numbers of scientists who believe: a) that climate change is happening; and that human activity is to blame.

In 2004, as they correctly point out, Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes published an essay in Science magazine in which she examined the abstracts of 928 articles on the subject of “global climate change” published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and “found that 75% supported the view that human activities are responsible for most of the observed warming over the previous 50 years while none directly dissented.”

They correctly identify, as well, a 2009 survey of 3,146 earth scientists that asked the question, “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” Overall, 86 percent of the respondents answered in the affirmative, but the survey’s authors arrived at the 97.5 percent figure after deciding to include only the responses of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change — and those are the only ones whose scientific opinions are truly relevant to the matter at hand. Bast and Spencer leave out that first point and treat the second as a deficit: “Seventy-nine scientists,” they write, “does not a consensus make.”

That same argument of “not enough” comes up again when they detail a 2010 paper published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, which found that between 97 and 98 percent of climate scientists who have published prolifically on the topic support the scientific consensus on climate change. (About 200 were included in the survey.) They take most issue, however, with the 2013 survey – conducted by the blog Skeptical Science — that is most responsible for popularizing the 97 percent meme. Skeptical Science’s results comes from a review of more than 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers. While most of those papers (66 percent) didn’t take a stance on whether global warming is man-made, 97 percent of those that did agreed that we are, in fact, causing climate change.

The problems any of these individual surveys can and do present are minuscule compared to the laughable counterpoints Bast and Spencer throw at them: a 2012 survey, for example, which found a strong showing of climate denial among members of the American Meteorological Society, and a petition, signed by 31,000 scientists asserting that ”there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of … carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Meteorologists, while weather experts, are not climate experts — and the survey also found that those who published the least peer-reviewed research were the most likely to be climate skeptics. As Chris Mooney pointed out at the time, the survey actually serves to strengthen the scientific consensus on climate change “by defining who’s a relevant expert in the first place.” And the Petition Project, while boasting an impressive number of signatories, actually represents just 0.3 percent of all U.S. science graduates. (A bachelor’s degree or higher in general science was all that was needed to qualify to sign.)

Meanwhile, Bast and Spencer leave out the extremely long list of scientific organizations — including the Academies of Science from 19 different countries — that publicly endorse the scientific consensus on climate change: again, that it’s happening and that greenhouse gas emissions are to blame.

Bast and Spencer’s beef, however, isn’t with the scientific consensus on whether man-made climate change is happening (although you’d be forgiven for thinking so, being that a favorite tactic of those who oppose action on climate change is to simply deny, deny, deny). Instead, they’ve moved past that unwinnable argument to one that contends that, hey, even if climate change is happening, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Going through the aforementioned surveys one by one, they point out how each has nothing to say about how potentially dangerous climate change is.

They’re right, of course: The “97 percent” statistic was never meant to establish a consensus on the dangers of climate change. (They’re right, too, that in it’s decontextualized state, it’s sometimes used to mean more than it should. When President Obama tweeted “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous,” that last clause wasn’t technically accurate.)

Writing in the Washington Post, Jason Samenow said as much last year:

What the consensus study does not address is the level of concern about the human role of climate change expressed in the studies surveyed or by the studies’ authors. Nor does it provide a sense of what the studies say about how severe climate change will be, and the consequences.

Many of the effects of climate change are already being felt; the more serious effects, however, are still a way’s off. There is no one consensus on just how soon they’ll occur, and how bad they’ll be, because science, not being in the business of making prophecies, is not able to say with absolute certainty just what’s going to happen in the future. What science can do, however, is identify patterns that may lead to future risks, and then help us understand just how urgently we need to be thinking about mitigating those risks. The American Association for the Advancement of Science acknowledged this brilliantly earlier this year, releasing an 18-page report consisting of “just the facts,” which confirmed that the world is at growing risk of “abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes” due to climate change. The report endorsed the 97 percent consensus, but, as the New York Times reiterated, ”That is not the same as claiming that all questions about climate change have been answered. In fact, enormous questions remain, and the science of global warming entails a robust, evolving discussion.”

This is the discussion that now needs to be had. The position of the AAAS is that spending money now to mitigate the risks is akin to the tens of billions of dollars we’ve put into seat belts and airbags: We’re preparing for the worst. “What’s extremely clear is that there’s a risk, a very significant risk,” said Mario Molina, who spearheaded the committee behind the report. “You don’t need 100 percent certainty for society to act.” Our understanding of those risks, of course, has been advanced by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Bast and Spencer attempt to “debunk” only one chapter of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report – the one that comments on the role of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, again arguing that the 41 authors and experts named as authors are too few to be considered a consensus. Of the rest of it — both its stark depiction of global warming’s threats and its contention that “responding to climate-related risks involves making decisions and taking actions in the face of continuing uncertainty about the extent of climate change and the severity of impacts in a changing world” – they remain mum. And not one mention is made, surprisingly enough, of the recently released National Climate Assessment, a landmark U.S. report detailing the far-ranging ways in which we’re already experiencing the effects of climate change.

Bast and Spencer take the extreme oppositional view: that any regulations or funding aimed at mitigation are unacceptable. Yet throughout their entire editorial, they never come out and say that. Instead, they operate using the usual tactics: by confusing these two separate issues and, in so doing, seeking to undermine our faith in science. What they’re really trying to do is keep us from moving on to the actual debate, which is no longer about whether scientists agree that climate change is happening: it’s about whether the world should continue to barrel down the highway at breakneck speeds without the benefit of seat belts. Bast and Spencer believe we should. No wonder they don’t want to make that argument — it’s hard to imagine how they could even begin to defend it.

The Wall Street Journal denies the 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming

Rupert Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal editorial page has long published op-eds denying basic climate science. This week, they published an editorial denying the 97% expert scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. The editorial may have been published as a damage control effort in the wake of John Oliver’s brilliant and hilarious global warming debate viral video, which has now surpassed 3 million views. After all, fossil fuel interests and Republican political strategists have been waging a campaign to obscure public awareness of the expert consensus on global warming for nearly three decades.

The Wall Street Journal editorial was written by Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute political advocacy group of Unabomber billboard infamy, and Roy Spencer of “global warming Nazis” infamy. Spencer previously claimed in testimony to US Congress to be part of the 97% consensus, although his research actually falls within the less than 3% fringe minority of papers that minimize or reject the human influence on global warming.

Spencer’s claim to the contrary was a result of failing to understand the consensus research he referenced. In The Wall Street Journal this week, Spencer and Bast continued that tradition of misunderstanding and misrepresenting the scientific literature on the expert global warming consensus.

For example, in order to reject the findings of the paper my colleagues and I published last year finding a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature, Bast and Spencer referenced a critical comment subsequently published by David Legates et al. in an obscure off-topic journal called Science and Education. That paper was based on a blog post written by Christopher Monckton, who's infamous for calling environmental activists “Hitler Youth.”

Monckton's blog post and paper tried to deny the consensus by ignoring 98% of the papers that endorse it. He compared only papers that explicitly quantified the human contribution to global warming to the full sample of all peer-reviewed papers that mention the phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.”

By that standard, there’s less than a 1% expert consensus on evolution, germ theory, and heliocentric theory, because there are hardly any papers in those scientific fields that bother to say something so obvious as, for example, “the Earth revolves around the sun.” The same is true of human-caused global warming. That Bast and Spencer refer to Monckton and Legates’ fundamentally wrong paper in an obscure off-topic journal as “more reliable research” reveals their bias in only considering denial “reliable.”

Bast and Spencer didn’t just limit their misrepresentations to our paper; they spread the wealth to all of the big global warming consensus studies. The first was done by Naomi Oreskes and published in Science in 2004, finding that in a sample of 928 peer-reviewed climate research abstracts, none rejected human-caused global warming. Bast and Spencer claimed, “scores of articles by prominent [contrarian] scientists … who question the consensus, were excluded.”

This is inaccurate; their ‘skeptical’ papers simply weren’t represented in Oreskes’ sample of 928 papers, which isn’t surprising since these contrarian papers account for less than 3% of the peer-reviewed global warming research. Oreskes’ sample also didn’t capture tens of thousands of other climate papers that are consistent with the 97% consensus. That’s why it’s called a sample.

Bast and Spencer also argued that abstracts don’t necessarily accurately reflect the content of a complete scientific paper, which could be a weakness in Oreskes’ study, given that she only considered the abstracts. However, our study last year included ratings of over 2,000 full papers by the scientist authors themselves. The result? Once again, a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

Next came a survey of Earth scientists by Doran & Zimmerman in 2009, and a survey of public statements made by climate researchers by Anderegg and colleagues in 2010, both again finding a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming among climate experts. In their opinion article, Bast and Spencer tried to reject these studies as having relatively small sample sizes.

However, their results were consistent with those in our study, which had a much larger sample size. We found 10,356 scientists whose published climate research has stated a position on human-caused global warming. Among those 10,356 scientists, 98.4% endorsed the consensus. In addition to these consensus studies, at least 80 National Academies of Science and dozens of scientific organizations from around the world agree with the consensus; none oppose it.

Instead of accepting these consistent results that have been published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals like Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Environmental Research Letters, Spencer and Bast choose to believe some less robust data that they find more convenient.

The first source they cite is a survey of members of the American Meteorological Society, in which only 13% of participants described climate science as their area of expertise. Worse yet, Bast and Spencer also referenced the Oregon Petition, which can be signed by anyone with just about any college science degree, and which has included “signatures” from fictional characters and Spice Girls. After complaining about the relatively small sample sizes of climate experts in previous surveys, Bast and Spencer instead put their trust in two documents that mostly include non-climate experts.

Bast and Spencer also tried to downplay the expert consensus, arguing that climate scientists don’t specify that global warming is “dangerous.” What we each consider dangerous is subjective and not scientific – some people think that driving 100 miles per hour in a rain storm isn’t dangerous. However, if the 97% expert consensus is right, it means we’re in for several more degrees of global warming if we continue on a business-as-usual path.

Climate Science Watch lists some key climate reports that summarize the “disruptive” and “highly damaging” threats we face from the impacts of further global warming. According to the IPCC, over 40% of global species will face increasing risk of extinction in a business-as-usual scenario. Glacier retreats will threaten water supplies in Central Asia and South America. Global sea level will rise in excess of 1 meter. We’re probably currently experiencing global warming at a rate unprecedented for the past 11,000 years. Scientists tend to shy away from making subjective assessments about what’s “dangerous,” but those are the types of threats climate scientists tell us we face from continued global warming.

Bottom line – the 97% expert scientific consensus on human-caused global warming is real. It presents a strong litmus test; those who deny this reality aren’t interested in good faith discussions about climate change. They’re simply in denial. We’re well past the point where we need to stop “debating” established facts like human-caused global warming and the 97% expert consensus. If Murdoch’s The Wall Street Journal keeps publishing editorials that flat-out deny reality, especially from people who compare those they disagree with to terrorists and Nazis, it will lose credibility and fall by the wayside as the rest of the world moves on to debate how to best solve the problem.

[WarTim 3,456]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Seriously. Look around . Anyone see the " crippling consequences " John Effing Kerry was talking about ?

WHERE IS IT ??

Storms ? Always had them. Since 2005, with Katrina, when we were told to get use to this as being " the norm ", we've not had any Hurricanes hit the US other than not so super storm Sandy. There was a lull of how 7 years. Not ONE hurricane man landfall on the US mainland.

Raptor. I admire your effort. You must understand that FACTS do not fit into the Jonestowners playbook. :-)

[AUDub 11,147]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Seriously. Look around . Anyone see the " crippling consequences " John Effing Kerry was talking about ?

WHERE IS IT ??

Storms ? Always had them. Since 2005, with Katrina, when we were told to get use to this as being " the norm ", we've not had any Hurricanes hit the US other than not so super storm Sandy. There was a lull of how 7 years. Not ONE hurricane man landfall on the US mainland.

Raptor. I admire your effort. You must understand that FACTS do not fit into the Jonestowners playbook. :-)

I do consider the facts. More than you realize. What I don't consider is reactionary horse hockey.

[AURaptor 1,122]

I do consider the facts. More than you realize. What I don't consider is reactionary horse hockey.

Such as AGW ???

[AUDub 11,147]

I do consider the facts. More than you realize. What I don't consider is reactionary horse hockey.

Such as AGW ???

Got anymore crap to throw against the wall?

[autigeremt 6,609]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

[AURaptor 1,122]

Ahh yes... scatological pejoratives and belittling the intelligence of those who have different opinions. S.O.P. for the Left.

Glad ya delivered as expected.

[AUDub 11,147]

Ahh yes... scatological pejoratives and belittling the intelligence of those who have different opinions. S.O.P. for the Left.

Glad ya delivered as expected.

Says the guy that called me a bammer.

Hypocrite.

[homersapien 11,371]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Funny coming from someone who believes it's all part of God's plan.

[homersapien 11,371]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

BS. Many of the posts made on this forum are embarrasingly dumb. If you don't have any standards that's your problem. I think we can do better.

[Weegle777 78]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Funny coming from someone who believes it's all part of God's plan.

Where did you get that?

[Weegle777 78]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

BS. Many of the posts made on this forum are embarrasingly dumb. If you don't have any standards that's your problem. I think we can do better.

By "I think we can do better", you really mean, "get on board with the 97%, or we will just call you stupid."

You don't want discussion, you want conformity, and you won't get that.

[WarTim 3,456]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Funny coming from someone who believes it's all part of God's plan.

Where did you get that?

weegle,This is the part where he/it attempts to change the subject instead of admitting what we all already know....Wait for it...now. ;-)

[AUDub 11,147]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

BS. Many of the posts made on this forum are embarrasingly dumb. If you don't have any standards that's your problem. I think we can do better.

By "I think we can do better", you really mean, "get on board with the 97%, or we will just call you stupid."

You don't want discussion, you want conformity, and you won't get that.

That's not what he means. At all. Please read what we're saying for a change.

[homersapien 11,371]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Funny coming from someone who believes it's all part of God's plan.

Where did you get that?

To be honest, I inferred it from your fatalistic tone in your posts, as well as your apparantly faith-based statements like " man is not capable of changing the climate" (paraphrased).

Am I wrong?

[homersapien 11,371]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

BS. Many of the posts made on this forum are embarrasingly dumb. If you don't have any standards that's your problem. I think we can do better.

By "I think we can do better", you really mean, "get on board with the 97%, or we will just call you stupid."

You don't want discussion, you want conformity, and you won't get that.

No, actually I am looking for rational arguments. If we don't agree, maybe I'll learn something, or at least hear a reasoned counterpoint.

To illustrate, imagine the opposite of most of tim's and raptor's posts.

[AUDub 11,147]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

BS. Many of the posts made on this forum are embarrasingly dumb. If you don't have any standards that's your problem. I think we can do better.

By "I think we can do better", you really mean, "get on board with the 97%, or we will just call you stupid."

You don't want discussion, you want conformity, and you won't get that.

No, actually I am looking for rational arguments. If we don't agree, maybe I'll learn something, or at least hear a reasoned counterpoint.

To illustrate, imagine the opposite of most of tim's and raptor's posts.

Heh. They're not gonna like that.

[homersapien 11,371]

I really didn't think the intellectual quotient on the forum could be lowered much. I was wrong.

Enough with it already. You are not in a position to determine intellect. You can make rhetorical comments without that.

BS. Many of the posts made on this forum are embarrasingly dumb. If you don't have any standards that's your problem. I think we can do better.

I

By "I think we can do better", you really mean, "get on board with the 97%, or we will just call you stupid."

You don't want discussion, you want conformity, and you won't get that.

No, actually I am looking for rational arguments. If we don't agree, maybe I'll learn something, or at least hear a reasoned counterpoint.

To illustrate, imagine the opposite of most of tim's and raptor's posts.

Heh. They're not gonna like that.

Good. Maybe they'll leave. They cheapen and degrade the forum.

[aubfaninga 16]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Funny coming from someone who believes it's all part of God's plan.

I had to move my toes to comment on this one but I chuckled thinking that WarTim labels you in the PC group.

[homersapien 11,371]

Don't bring logic and facts into this!

Funny coming from someone who believes it's all part of God's plan.

I had to move my toes to comment on this one but I chuckled thinking that WarTim labels you in the PC group.

I probably should have mentioned it when I posted, but no offense was intended.

I have the utmost respect for Weeg's faith. He represents what is best of Christianity - the Grace of Jesus. He knows how I feel about him.

But after all, I am still a poor agnostic, so if he brings faith to a discussion of AGW warming, I am going to respond.

[AURaptor 1,122]

Ahh yes... scatological pejoratives and belittling the intelligence of those who have different opinions. S.O.P. for the Left.

Glad ya delivered as expected.

Says the guy that called me a bammer.

Hypocrite.

bammers cling to the delusion that nothing they say or do is wrong. Their number of national titles can double, over night, and if the " official word " from upon high says its so, then by golly, it MUST be true !

It's an appeal to a biased authority, which has a clear an undeniable agenda. Promoting bama football to be superior to all others.

Same goes for the AGW crowd. Ignore the fact that just a few short decades ago, this very same 'elite' crowd of scientists were crying wolf that too much pollution would trigger a sort of 'nuclear winter' and hasten the return of another ice age , we NOW are wiser and more learned. All that pollution will cause global warming , climate change ! Yes, first things will get too hot, and THAT will cause things to get very cold, and result in another ice age.

So, what ever can we do ?

Even the most ardent of AGW types agree, that if we flat out cut c02 emissions to nil, the damage is already done. There's nothing we can do to reverse the effect of mankind's mere few hundred years of clear cutting and industry.

So then, what the frell is the point of setting up carbon credits and pointless wealth redistribution system of taxes and heavy fines, if the end result is NOTHING helps that climate ???

IS pollution a problem ? No one will deny that ! But concocting a phony climate crisis which doesn't fix what we CLAIM we're trying to fix is nothing short of madness.

Resources could be better spent dealing w/ the problem directly. Not phonying up this cult of planet worship which paints mankind as some sort of cancer or foreign body. Hell, we're as much a part of this rock as anything else. So stop trying to claim we aren't.

[AUDub 11,147]

Yep. More crap. Keep going. Something will stick eventually.

bammers cling to the delusion that nothing they say or do is wrong. Their number of national titles can double, over night, and if the " official word " from upon high says its so, then by golly, it MUST be true !

It's an appeal to a biased authority, which has a clear an undeniable agenda. Promoting bama football to be superior to all others.

Same goes for the AGW crowd. Ignore the fact that just a few short decades ago, this very same 'elite' crowd of scientists were crying wolf that too much pollution would trigger a sort of 'nuclear winter' and hasten the return of another ice age , we NOW are wiser and more learned. All that pollution will cause global warming , climate change ! Yes, first things will get too hot, and THAT will cause things to get very cold, and result in another ice age.

Calling bull right here. There never was a consensus on "global cooling." Some scientists were predicting warming more than a century ago.

You're just twisting the consensus into a Galileo gambit.

The difference between the bammers and the "AGW crowd" is the mountains of literature and observation confirming the warming.

So, what ever can we do ?

Even the most ardent of AGW types agree, that if we flat out cut c02 emissions to nil, the damage is already done. There's nothing we can do to reverse the effect of mankind's mere few hundred years of clear cutting and industry.

So then, what the frell is the point of setting up carbon credits and pointless wealth redistribution system of taxes and heavy fines, if the end result is NOTHING helps that climate ???

It's an effort at mitigating the damage. We're probably already in for a rough ride, but it can always get worse.

IS pollution a problem ? No one will deny that ! But concocting a phony climate crisis which doesn't fix what we CLAIM we're trying to fix is nothing short of madness.

Bare-assed assertion.

Resources could be better spent dealing w/ the problem directly. Not phonying up this cult of planet worship which paints mankind as some sort of cancer or foreign body. Hell, we're as much a part of this rock as anything else. So stop trying to claim we aren't.

Stupid rhetorical strawman.

[AURaptor 1,122]

Ben - there was a move by a CONSENSUS of scientists that the planet was headed for a ice age if we kept on polluting.

You may not like it, but that's the truth.

"Some" scientists can predict all manner of stuff, that doesn't make them any more than board walk fortune tellers.

Keep my bare ass out of this discussion.

And we ARE completely wasting our time, $ and resources chasing the AGW myth. It's not really a debate anymore. Our efforts to affect the weather are nil.

[AURaptor 1,122]

The arrival of another ice age has long been a chilling theme of science fiction. If the earth's recent history is any clue, says Marine Geologist Cesare Emiliani of the University of Miami, a new ice age could become a reality.

Writing in Science, Emiliani reports that the earth has undergone at least eight periods of extreme cold and seven of torrid heat in the past 400,000 years. His conclusion is based on cores of ocean sediment from the Caribbean. Composed of the remains of tiny sea animals, the layered sediment provides a record of climatic changes. When the oceans warm up,...

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910467,00.html

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PPdOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9wEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7439,6367271

And a whole list of articles printed , from the 70's, all on the topic of the coming ice age.

http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html

[AUDub 11,147]

Ben - there was a move by a CONSENSUS of scientists that the planet was headed for a ice age if we kept on polluting.

You may not like it, but that's the truth.

"Some" scientists can predict all manner of stuff, that doesn't make them any more than board walk fortune tellers.

Keep my bare ass out of this discussion.

Wrong wrong wrong. Fractally wrong. The "global cooling" consensus was indeed a myth. Scientific consensus is what most scientists in a particular field of study agree is true on a given question, when disagreement on the question is limited and insignificant. That was never the case with "global cooling"

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/01/the_myth_of_the_global_cooling_consensus.html