Doubtless, the competing camps in the global warming "debate" will both spin this incident as best they can. But, in the same way that the earth's climate (and the human impact on it) is what it is despite what we think about it (read: a fact) -- the emails are what they are.
Has anyone done any research on the emails? Is there any serious attempt by the climate scientists to hide information? If so (which, from the vague reports mentioned, doesn't seem likely) we could all get behind THAT as being wrong, right? Or would lying, or distorting the truth about the climate be ok?
--This may be impossible, but I hope this can be a flame free discussion. If you want to scream about the truth or falsity of man-made global warming, please, do so elsewhere.
There is clear and obvious intent to hide information, if you read some of it. The files are still on torrents/rapidshare/etc, if you want to read them.
Yes, it is well-known by climate scientists that tree ring chronologies stop being good temperature proxies after 1940. The "divergence problem" is well-known, well-studied, and many papers on dendroclimatology include it. Usually, when you are attempting an approximation, you do not include the approximation in places where you know it fails. If you are to contest the "breaking off" of the tree line approximation, you need to argue one of the following:
1. We should include approximations in the entire plotted range, including the areas where the approximation fails. 2. Tree ring data makes a shit proxy for temperature in general and should not have been included at all.
What is a scary thought is that it took something as radical as this for it to make news. What modern news sells is fear and sensationalism. Al Gore's presentation on climate change brought to light a lot of the issues, and propagated fear...so the media picked up on it. In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
Yes but with new evidence they can change their opinion
Most meaningless evidence ever. So someone claims that some emails were intercepted, and not simply written by the people claiming to have intercepted them.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
Can you give me the name of some climate scientists (defined as having at least a few papers in the field of atmospheric or climate science) who support the statement of the petition? You would not ask a biologist for judgment on theoretical physics, or a chemist for judgment on neurology. Even the scientists who are considered skeptics do not say that there isn't global warming.
[[EDIT]] Their criterion for "scientist" is "has a BS, MD, or PhD."
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
That turned out to be a PR stunt, half of those people weren't even real scientists and NO ONE of those 31.000 people were climate scientists.
Thank god! i finally can hope that people will realize that global warming is a joke. Going 'green' is simply a business opportunity for smart people to exploit idiots. 'buy this green thing and that green thing, you save the planet- but it will cost you more. lol
Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world a little nicer to live in.
I agree with this. Reducing waste and environmental destruction is a win regardless of climate change. The destruction we've wrought from our current consumption practices is apparent even to a lay person.
I find it sad that the average man can be so greatly influenced by sections of the media against something when all the research points to the exact opposite.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
You guys and your hokey conspiracy theories. Run a search in the literature (think peer reviewed journals, if you even know what that means) looking for articles which take a stance on the global warming issue. There's almost a thousand of them. Guess what they say? 100% of them agree that global warming is not a "joke."
On November 22 2009 11:17 Biochemist wrote: You guys and your hokey conspiracy theories. Run a search in the literature (think peer reviewed journals, if you even know what that means) looking for articles which take a stance on the global warming issue. There's almost a thousand of them. Guess what they say? 100% of them agree that global warming is not a "joke."
the earth is warming. the issue is whether or not we are the cause and also if a tax on one of the most abundant elements, carbon, is the solution to anything.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Or just screw the entire economy up. But we can hand wave our way through that.
Peer review journals have a way of being very political. At best, it's a bunch of scientists engaging in mutual masturbation in the name of expert commentary. At worst, it's gatekeeper against publishing "undesirable," "uncomfortable," or "inexpedient" material or a way of carrying out personal revenge in academia.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Either that, or we become slaves, who have to pay the government for every shit we take.
If you really want to reduce waste, change the fractional reserve banking system which relies on ever-increasing consumption to operate. Create a sustainable system instead of turning humanity into debt-slaves.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Either that, or we become slaves, who have to pay the government for every shit we take.
You already have to pay for shit disposal.
On November 22 2009 11:31 Cloud wrote: Oh what a wonderful idea 'peer reviewed articles', as they are as free as oxygen and corruption is inexistent in the scientific community.
Every field has bad apples, but an entire field of bad apples is unheard of.
On November 22 2009 11:36 WhiteNights wrote: Every field has bad apples, but an entire field of bad apples is unheard of.
Really? what about the comedy of errors in the financial markets? How do all financial institutions in the world make the same stupid mistake at the same exact time?
It's always discouraging when you hear about this stuff happening. I'd like one time there to be news "____ was hacked, but everything found completely legit... Politicians baffled"
Doubtless, the competing camps in the global warming "debate" will both spin this incident as best they can. But, in the same way that the earth's climate (and the human impact on it) is what it is despite what we think about it (read: a fact) -- the emails are what they are.
Has anyone done any research on the emails? Is there any serious attempt by the climate scientists to hide information? If so (which, from the vague reports mentioned, doesn't seem likely) we could all get behind THAT as being wrong, right? Or would lying, or distorting the truth about the climate be ok?
--This may be impossible, but I hope this can be a flame free discussion. If you want to scream about the truth or falsity of man-made global warming, please, do so elsewhere.
how can the pro camp spin it? all data supplied by these taxpayer funded organisations should be public domain , not just the parts they decide to cherry pick
On November 22 2009 11:39 meeple wrote: It's always discouraging when you hear about this stuff happening. I'd like one time there to be news "____ was hacked, but everything found completely legit... Politicians baffled"
Not news! Yawn. No one makes a fuss and you never catch wind of it.
On November 22 2009 11:31 Cloud wrote: Oh what a wonderful idea 'peer reviewed articles', as they are as free as oxygen and corruption is inexistent in the scientific community.
Every field has bad apples, but an entire field of bad apples is unheard of.
Possibly, but in this case the field is highly manipulated. If you dig into the link I provided, you will realize that the entire field is being given false data, so naturally they will arrive at false conclusions.
Much of the recent evidence was based off of data that wasn't public. Why would they not release the data for so long? When the data was finally released, we learn that it was all based off of 12 tree cores, even though much more data was available.
And most of it is based on "if the curve that always goes up and down keeps its current track (up!) we're in a heap of shit". Aswell as an inability to understand the fundamentals behind the scientific method (ie, not realizing that correlation does not imply casusality),
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Or, instead of taking preemptive action against every potential absurd possibility ever, we remove all doubt and scientifically prove the problem? This is a modern day version of witch hunting.
What if this is a result of the sun, and things will get much worse? Now, instead of working on the problem, we all die to something that could have possibly been prevented. Oh, but at least we had a "green" planet to burn.
It is always interesting to see that nearly everybody disagreeing with global warming comes from the US... Damn, Americans must be so far less ignorant than the whole world!
On November 22 2009 11:55 ggrrg wrote: It is always interesting to see that nearly everybody disagreeing with global warming comes from the US... Damn, Americans must be so far less ignorant than the whole world! [/sarcasm]
It's actually impressive that you managed to link this to USA-bashing somehow. Fantastic job.
As for all the e-scientists here, who are you guys? Particularly those with the insights into the peer-review processes; could you go ahead and elucidate the process for me so I can compare your versions with how it's worked in my experience?
Occams razor applies here. A government conspiracy to fake global warming so they can impose taxes and regulations is ridiculous. It seems there was just a simple misunderstanding on the wording of the e-mail.
On November 22 2009 11:55 ggrrg wrote: It is always interesting to see that nearly everybody disagreeing with global warming comes from the US... Damn, Americans must be so far less ignorant than the whole world!
[/sarcasm]
Honestly, this is what bothers me on the issue. Global warming is a hoax through and through, and yet the rest of the world acts like it's our moral superiors because they've completely drunk the koolaid on this issue.
If people bother to look at the facts, the actual temperature data, and make some searches on Lexus Nexus, it's pretty easy to find the dissent (the factual, substantive dissent) rather than the noise created by ratings-driven media (no, it's not a conspiracy, it's a fact: scare stories draw bigger ratings than the opposite). There is a serious scientific debate going on about the origin of the warming, and the origin is most likely not anthropogenic.
On November 22 2009 11:31 Cloud wrote: Oh what a wonderful idea 'peer reviewed articles', as they are as free as oxygen and corruption is inexistent in the scientific community.
On November 22 2009 11:17 Biochemist wrote: You guys and your hokey conspiracy theories. Run a search in the literature (think peer reviewed journals, if you even know what that means) looking for articles which take a stance on the global warming issue. There's almost a thousand of them. Guess what they say? 100% of them agree that global warming is not a "joke."
the earth is warming. the issue is whether or not we are the cause and also if a tax on one of the most abundant elements, carbon, is the solution to anything.
Sorry, I guess my post was a little vague. 100% of those peer reviewed articles I mentioned were in agreement that we were the cause.
Edit: Oh my God you guys. More than 600 groups of scientists publish papers in peer reviewed journals arguing that we are the cause of global warming and zero publish papers in peer reviewed journals arguing that we aren't.
The obvious counter is that the guys who do the "peer reviewing" are all corrupted and have a political agenda, but many of those journals are known for being relatively open minded and publishing controversial ideas as long as the studies were done in a reasonably scientific manner. If you do a scientific study in your field and want to publish a conclusion that doesn't agree with the majority of the literature, you'll be able to find journals that will publish it, believe me. The only thing you have to worry about is the backlash to your career.
If you really want to look into the issue, write a several page research paper for yourself using arguments from both sides. Use those critical thinking skills you learned in college to weigh the pros and cons of each side and decide who's really full of shit (it isn't the scientists).
On November 22 2009 11:55 ggrrg wrote: It is always interesting to see that nearly everybody disagreeing with global warming comes from the US... Damn, Americans must be so far less ignorant than the whole world! [/sarcasm]
It's actually impressive that you managed to link this to USA-bashing somehow. Fantastic job.
As for all the e-scientists here, who are you guys? Particularly those with the insights into the peer-review processes; could you go ahead and elucidate the process for me so I can compare your versions with how it's worked in my experience?
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the US. Been there, lived there for an year and I met many nice people there.
However, the US has the worst, most biased and often enough intentionally misinforming media coverage in the world (probably beaten only by the media in North Korea and Somalia...). In the US, corporation interests are omnipresent and business influence is so extremely strong that it heavily affects media, politics and eventually people's way of thinking. Nowhere in the world I have seen anything like this, and I've come around quite a bit...
On November 22 2009 11:55 ggrrg wrote: It is always interesting to see that nearly everybody disagreeing with global warming comes from the US... Damn, Americans must be so far less ignorant than the whole world! [/sarcasm]
It's actually impressive that you managed to link this to USA-bashing somehow. Fantastic job.
As for all the e-scientists here, who are you guys? Particularly those with the insights into the peer-review processes; could you go ahead and elucidate the process for me so I can compare your versions with how it's worked in my experience?
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the US. Been there, lived there for an year and I met many nice people there.
However, the US has the worst, most biased and often enough intentionally misinforming media coverage in the world (probably beaten only by the media in North Korea and Somalia...). In the US, corporation interests are omnipresent and business influence is so extremely strong that it heavily affects media, politics and eventually people's way of thinking. Nowhere in the world I have seen anything like this, and I've come around quite a bit...
That's fair enough. I just saw it as another "screw you USA" post, I apologize for taking it the wrong way.
global warming is used as an excuse to tax one of the most abundant elements on earth. Carbon.
When you breathe you produce carbon. Every animal produces carbon. You do any work you produce carbon.
What they are doing is putting tax on life. Your life. To live you will pay to those who sell carbon offsets. They make up the price for it as they see fit.
At the same time the same small group of people will regulate development of developing nations. Not letting them using the same ways developed world used ie burning fossil fuels. And what enabled those nations become developed.
This way the power can be still contained in the same places as it is now.
I'm all up for using cleaner energy and being environmentally sustainable. But the way the government is spinning it in their favour is disgusting.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Or just screw the entire economy up. But we can hand wave our way through that.
No world = no economy... I think some things are more important than others?
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Either that, or we become slaves, who have to pay the government for every shit we take.
If you really want to reduce waste, change the fractional reserve banking system which relies on ever-increasing consumption to operate. Create a sustainable system instead of turning humanity into debt-slaves.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Or, instead of taking preemptive action against every potential absurd possibility ever, we remove all doubt and scientifically prove the problem? This is a modern day version of witch hunting.
What if this is a result of the sun, and things will get much worse? Now, instead of working on the problem, we all die to something that could have possibly been prevented. Oh, but at least we had a "green" planet to burn.
Well science is usually performed by the scientific method, lets take a a gander of what we currently have:
1. Define the question ... why is Earth heading up in unprecedented rate? *check!*
2. Gather information and resources (observe) ... done, by multiple means and fairly congruent by the majority of the scientific community. *check!*
3. Form hypothesis ... we are screwing up our planet. *check!*
4. Perform experiment and collect data ... lets be wiser and in our use of natural resources and see what happens. ... ... but, that takes money and we people have to do work... no more air condition!? How sure are we that global warming is real!?
5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis 7. Publish results 8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
This is pretty much how I interpret every argument against global.
[[EDIT]] Also my original post was not to prove or disprove global warming, but to state the fairly obvious that our actions are damaging the planet and this will affect us.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
Can you give me the name of some climate scientists (defined as having at least a few papers in the field of atmospheric or climate science) who support the statement of the petition? You would not ask a biologist for judgment on theoretical physics, or a chemist for judgment on neurology. Even the scientists who are considered skeptics do not say that there isn't global warming.
[[EDIT]] Their criterion for "scientist" is "has a BS, MD, or PhD."
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."
Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
Or just screw the entire economy up. But we can hand wave our way through that.
No world = no economy... I think some things are more important than others?
What? How did you get to "no world?" Is this some derivative of Cheney's "one percent doctrine" except applied to global warming?
On November 22 2009 11:55 ggrrg wrote: It is always interesting to see that nearly everybody disagreeing with global warming comes from the US... Damn, Americans must be so far less ignorant than the whole world! [/sarcasm]
It's actually impressive that you managed to link this to USA-bashing somehow. Fantastic job.
As for all the e-scientists here, who are you guys? Particularly those with the insights into the peer-review processes; could you go ahead and elucidate the process for me so I can compare your versions with how it's worked in my experience?
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the US. Been there, lived there for an year and I met many nice people there.
However, the US has the worst, most biased and often enough intentionally misinforming media coverage in the world (probably beaten only by the media in North Korea and Somalia...). In the US, corporation interests are omnipresent and business influence is so extremely strong that it heavily affects media, politics and eventually people's way of thinking. Nowhere in the world I have seen anything like this, and I've come around quite a bit...
lol you rate the us just above north korea and somalia that's cute.
On November 22 2009 12:55 BuGzlToOnl wrote: 1. Define the question ... why is Earth heading up in unprecedented rate? *check!*
2. Gather information and resources (observe) ... done, by multiple means and fairly congruent by the majority of the scientific community. *check!*
3. Form hypothesis ... we are screwing up our planet. *check!*
4. Perform experiment and collect data ... lets be wiser and in our use of natural resources and see what happens. ... ... but, that takes money and we people have to do work... no more air condition!? How sure are we that global warming is real!?
5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis 7. Publish results 8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
This is pretty much how I interpret every argument against global.
[[EDIT]] Also my original post was not to prove or disprove global warming, but to state the fairly obvious that our actions are damaging the planet and this will affect us.
Ahhh yes, but political theater is far more complicated than that. Let's just present one of the possibilities of what may have happened.
1. Define the political enemy ... those coal companies and their union workers *check!*
2. Identify an activity that could be detrimental the rest of the politic ... they pollute with lots of ash and sludge but they also put a lot of carbon dioxide into the air. *check!*
3. Fund scientists to provide evidence for... ... those coal companies are screwing up our planet with their carbon dioxide. *check!*
4. Get evidence to scare the politics. ... see those coal companies were really really evil.*check!*
5. The monster is loose ... other people take notice and start getting really scared as well. ...... more people grow alarmed and people start pouring money into. Politicians ride the wave of alarm and look for potential possibilities of power grabs.
It's not like environmental damage isn't a problem, but carbon dioxide would be the least of our problems there. If countries could just eliminate a lot of the suburban sprawl and concentrate the population in cities, the human population would wreck a lot less damage than it does now. Incidentally a lot less energy would be used transporting people between cities and suburbs and solve part of the carbon dioxide issue.
On November 22 2009 11:31 Cloud wrote: Oh what a wonderful idea 'peer reviewed articles', as they are as free as oxygen and corruption is inexistent in the scientific community.
Every field has bad apples, but an entire field of bad apples is unheard of.
Possibly, but in this case the field is highly manipulated. If you dig into the link I provided, you will realize that the entire field is being given false data, so naturally they will arrive at false conclusions.
Are you telling me that climate scientists don't know about the divergence problem and were misled by other climate scientists? Or that climate scientists misled the public?
On November 22 2009 11:44 fight_or_flight wrote: Much of the recent evidence was based off of data that wasn't public. Why would they not release the data for so long? When the data was finally released, we learn that it was all based off of 12 tree cores, even though much more data was available.
The data was taken in the 1980s. The original, unprocessed source could have been on five inch floppies or tapes for all we know; do you have a five inch floppy reader?
On November 22 2009 13:04 spets1 wrote: Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."
Anybody who has access to the Washington Post, The Telegraph, or The Australian has heard this, and for those that don't, anybody who has ever looked at a temperature record has seen it too. In addition, if you take any temperature reading and find the best-fit line to the last ten years, it goes up anyway, so this isn't true - but even if it were down, you can find many series of years in the past where the temperature declined - start at a high year, end at a lower year, WOW, global warming stopped in 1950, 1970, and 1990 too!
On November 22 2009 13:59 Maero wrote: Wait, so you want to create even more population density in cities?
Just trying to get your argument straight, here.
A city dweller has less environmental impact than a suburb dweller.
I have a very unique perspective on this climate issue because of my educational background.
For my undergrad I studied geophysics and had a ton of interaction with the geology and environmental science departments at my school. There were some incredibly influential professors who backed the "global warming being man-made" idea and 99% of them thought we were doomed.
Now I'm doing my graduate work in Petroleum Engineering and all the professors here are convinced that "green" shouldn't be a priority and that mankind will have the technological means to fix this issue should it ever become a problem.
I'm curious to see how both sides of the spectrum take this news.
On November 22 2009 12:55 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Well science is usually performed by the scientific method, lets take a a gander of what we currently have:
1. Define the question ... why is Earth heading up in unprecedented rate? *check!*
2. Gather information and resources (observe) ... done, by multiple means and fairly congruent by the majority of the scientific community. *check!*
3. Form hypothesis ... we are screwing up our planet. *check!*
4. Perform experiment and collect data ... lets be wiser and in our use of natural resources and see what happens. ... ... but, that takes money and we people have to do work... no more air condition!? How sure are we that global warming is real!?
5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis 7. Publish results 8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
This is pretty much how I interpret every argument against global.
[[EDIT]] Also my original post was not to prove or disprove global warming, but to state the fairly obvious that our actions are damaging the planet and this will affect us.
Science is not settled on either a warming or cooling, on it being man-made or natural, or even if it can or needs to be changed. Following through with one possible conclusion while ignoring all the other myriad possibilities is not science, it's agenda.
On November 22 2009 13:59 Maero wrote: Wait, so you want to create even more population density in cities?
Just trying to get your argument straight, here.
Does Los Angelos manage its 12 million people better or does New York handle its 20 million people better? Which city has more traffic?
Actually the comparison shouldn't be between which has more traffic (as this only explains number of vehicles on the road), but should be comparing how well the city's inhabitants can get around. Urban development is a hell lot better than suburban sprawl. Problem is that it's the "American dream" to own a big house with a lawn, so local politicians encourage suburban development to win more votes.
That tree ring data is inaccurate after a certain age is no cause for alarm. I wrote a paper using a constructed data set and experienced a lot of these same problems... Namely that higher-resolution data sets tend to have the property of reduced longevity. Thus what is often done is to superimpose more recent, high-resolution data with older, lower resolution data from ice cores, etc...
Usually some calibration is required at the edges, but overall the data is pretty solid.
On November 22 2009 14:30 ShroomyD wrote: COME RIGHT IN LADIES AND GENTS~~!! GET YOUR 450+ PEER REVIEWED PAPERS that CHALLENGE THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE~~~!~
First thing to note "scientific consensus on climate change" can be spoken about with varying degrees of certainty. If one is only to count papers that disagree with the assessment "humans are the most significant source of twentieth and twenty-first global warming" and count only papers dealing with this issue, and "Energy & Environment" is not a reputable journal, then you're left with far far less. The vast majority of papers in the link deal with secondary issues, such as An Inconvenient Truth, CO2 lagging temperature change, mortality estimates, permafrost, acidification, climatic cycles, the IPCC, and Kyoto, have nothing to do with this premise.
Most other parts of the "scientific consensus" such as "rising temperature leads to rising sea level" similarly only have a small handful of disputations and thousands of confirmations.
Putting all of these together, which probably contend for a few dozen wildly differing statements, including many statements that are not consensus such as "Kyoto was perfect" and "more tornadoes", along with a lot of papers that don't challenge the consensus such as "CO2 has lagged temperature in paleohistory" or "climate cycles exist" and a lot of papers from E&E, you can scrape together 450 total.
Hmm... I've seen comments in this thread claiming conflicting things about the temperature change over the course of recent decades. Ignoring which direction the temperature is said to be going in, people are making claims about the existence of man-made global warming based on analysis of this planet's history. However, there is no way know what the temperature should be if humans weren't here. That is to say, we have an experimental group (this planet) but no control group (this planet without humans, this planet without fossil fuels, etc.).
So, it could be that while the temperature is going up, it would be going up just as much if humans weren't burning fossil fuels. It could also be that the temperature is going down, but it would be much lower except for man-made global warming. In this case, to draw conclusions solely from the experimental group with no control group to compare to seems absurd.
That being said, there's plenty of reasons to "go green," and plenty of reasons not to, that are purely based in health and economics.
On the subject of information getting to the general public in the US: News companies, like every other for-profit company in the US, are just that. They're for profit. They exist to make money. Therefore, they will do whatever they can without fabricating evidence to win people's attentions. Taking quotations out of context, misleading headlines, presenting only part of the data, and most importantly, being memorable. They don't want people to say "I saw on a bunch of channels..." or "I saw on some channel...," they want people to say "I saw on (insert news channel here)..." Applying this to global warming, every time something comes out in conflict with the last big break, every news source wants to be the first place you see it, the most recent place you last saw it at any given time, and the most memorable place you see it. Thus, with this story, news corporations bombard the population with "Global Warming is a Hoax!" If some new data comes out that predicts that the Florida beaches will all be under water within the next 100 years (which could also be caused by erosion), the headlines will scream something like "Global Warming: The Impending Catastrophe!" Also, it should say something about the US news sources in general that so much of their time is devoted to the latest celebrity scandal, wedding, house purchase, etc.
On November 22 2009 09:17 Vedic wrote: There is clear and obvious intent to hide information, if you read some of it. The files are still on torrents/rapidshare/etc, if you want to read them.
On November 22 2009 11:38 TanGeng wrote: Really? what about the comedy of errors in the financial markets? How do all financial institutions in the world make the same stupid mistake at the same exact time?
Haven't read the rest of the thread. You ask a very interesting question. There is one explanation commonly accepted.
The people controlling the financial institutions were acting in their own self interest, and not in the interest of the firm they were controlling.
I personally do not find this to be a particularly satisfactory explanation for such a massive failure on such a massive scale. It's been pretty common talk in society lately, that CEOs get excessive salaries and that they don't act in their firm's interest. This is not limited to the financial sector. Perhaps some CEOs can get away with making decisions bad for the company and good for themselves, but not even close to "many" and absolutely not all. What is different here to make the systems that have been in place to check up on CEOs so suddenly fail, not in a number of isolated cases, but so massively?
I'd be much more interested in an explanation that can explain the global failure in terms of the prisoner dilemma. In case you don't know what that is, I'll explain it here briefly.
A murder has been committed by two people. The police is pretty sure who the murderers are, but doesn't have enough evidence to jail them. Fortunately, the two commit a minor crime allowing the police to arrest them.
The police offers the prisoners the following deal: we know you committed that murder. We just don't have enough evidence to convict you. If you confess and your accomplice doesn't, you will go free as crown witness and we will jail him for ten years. If you don't confess and your accomplice does, we will jail you for ten years and he will go free as crown witness. If you both confess, I don't need a crown witness, and you'll both go to jail for eight years. Finally, if neither of you confess, then we can only jail you for at most two years for the minor crime we convicted you on.
If both prisoners act in their own interest, they will both confess, giving a total jail time of 16 years, the worst possible "group" result! However, each of their individual results is better than if they didn't confess.
The primary error of banks was lending too much money out. Maybe if every competitor is lending out too much and too easily, then you have two choices: lend out unsafely as well or lose a lot of money because of a disadvantaged market position. If nothing happens, then you are better off than before because you lent out unsafely - you were able to keep you market position. If something happens, it will happen to all the other banks too, so you are still able to keep your relative market position.
If that's how it works, then banks that follow the aggressive lending strategy are more likely to get a dominant market position than banks that follow a less aggressive lending strategy, just because of the way our banking system is set up. And that, in turn, makes it inevitable that the banking system is going to fail, the worst possible group result.
On November 22 2009 14:30 ShroomyD wrote: COME RIGHT IN LADIES AND GENTS~~!! GET YOUR 450+ PEER REVIEWED PAPERS that CHALLENGE THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE~~~!~
First thing to note "scientific consensus on climate change" can be spoken about with varying degrees of certainty. If one is only to count papers that disagree with the assessment "humans are the most significant source of twentieth and twenty-first global warming" and count only papers dealing with this issue, and "Energy & Environment" is not a reputable journal, then you're left with far far less. The vast majority of papers in the link deal with secondary issues, such as An Inconvenient Truth, CO2 lagging temperature change, mortality estimates, permafrost, acidification, climatic cycles, the IPCC, and Kyoto, have nothing to do with this premise.
Most other parts of the "scientific consensus" such as "rising temperature leads to rising sea level" similarly only have a small handful of disputations and thousands of confirmations.
Putting all of these together, which probably contend for a few dozen wildly differing statements, including many statements that are not consensus such as "Kyoto was perfect" and "more tornadoes", along with a lot of papers that don't challenge the consensus such as "CO2 has lagged temperature in paleohistory" or "climate cycles exist" and a lot of papers from E&E, you can scrape together 450 total.
Excellent.
I don't consider this a convincing argument, but I would like to see how you interpret it.
With all this above to reference, a couple things that I feel I should point out:
-Using the reason temperature hasn't been rising since 1998 as evidence against man-caused global warming is..I tried thinking of a nicer way to say this but its completely ridiculous. The average temperature fluctuates naturally, so taking around a decades worth of data (which is a part of one of these spikes) just isn't something you can use as a reason. It's like saying that raising minimum wage is good for people because that means they'll get paid more money. There is much more context and ramifications you must consider before you can even come to a conclusion. What you want to reference is the general trend of these little spikes, not an individual one
-Carbon levels are at the part when naturally they should be really high. The problem is, with humans, we've set the earth on a course where the ppm won't naturally drop, instead theres enough pouring into the atmosphere and we will continue to go to higher ppm than we've been at in any point in natural history. That is the real problem
-There is a delayed reaction not visible in the graphs. The earth is a massive system with a lot of water. Naturally, the sunlight being trapped by carbon will take some years to really affect temperature. I want to drill this in, so imagine a large, heavy train. It's really hard to get it started, but once its going it will be just as hard if not harder to stop. This is not a commentary on TL's intelligence, I really want to emphasize this: Train = earth, forward motion = mean rising avg temperature, and measurement of ppm = precursor of train's forward motion.
At the rate we're going and the lack of change we (as a species) are showing, we will eventually change the atmosphere with our carbon output. This won't be the end of the world. This is the part that, from my research, scientists agree with. The real questions are how much is our world going to change and what kind of world we'll be left with. It's these two questions they can't agree on
i think in metaphors so if they don't make sense or aren't accurate, just entertain them. my real message doesn't lie in them, its just for the alternative view of the thought
kind of edit but kind of further note: I don't have a personal stance on this issue. I will take whatever side I need to further discussion
[edit
Just another random but further thought: Our founding fathers designed the constitution with the assumption that if two equal and opposite sides spar on something that the sparks created from the friction of the clash are the true and balanced resolve that comes out. keep that in mind with any argument, such as this one. take both sides extreme claims with a grain of salt
fact 1: temeprature has not been rising sice 1998 fact 2: co2 levels have been rising
conclusion : the conclusion of global warming due to rising level of co2 is wrong.
You do not understand the difference between "anecdote" and "data".
1998 is what is known in statistics as an "outlier". It was a very, very hot year. The hottest on record to date. It fell well outside of the general curve of increasing temperatures for the last 3+ decades. This means that, relative to 1998, the later years will seem cooler.
One outlier data point is meaningless in statistics. What matters is the overall trend. And that trend, even in this century, is towards warming.
So, it could be that while the temperature is going up, it would be going up just as much if humans weren't burning fossil fuels. It could also be that the temperature is going down, but it would be much lower except for man-made global warming. In this case, to draw conclusions solely from the experimental group with no control group to compare to seems absurd.
I hate this argument. This basically assumes that climate scientists are rock stupid and have no idea how climate works at all. And therefore, they would have no way of knowing what would be happening to the climate if we were not adding lots and lots of previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere.
Fortunately, this is not the case. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas; it is a verifiable fact that CO2 strongly absorbs light in the infrared. We know that adding large quantities of it into the atmosphere will lead to higher temperatures, as a consequence of the first fact. Therefore, the only question (to the lay person, as the actual climate scientists know this already) is how much it takes before substantial warming becomes inevitable.
Our founding fathers designed the constitution with the assumption that if two equal and opposite sides spar on something that the sparks created from the friction of the clash are the true and balanced resolve that comes out. keep that in mind with any argument, such as this one. take both sides extreme claims with a grain of salt
I'm sorry, but this is bull. It's even a logical fallacy: the belief that, if two people are arguing opposing positions, the correct answer must be in the middle.
If side A has empirical data, measured and tested over decades, and side B has nothing but conjecture, speculation, and arguments ad hominem, the correct answer isn't in the middle.
If this is truly what the "our founding fathers" had in mind when they wrote the Constitution, then they were deeply and incredibly stupid. The middle is not always the best place. Sometimes, one side of an argument is made by ignorant people trying to protect their pocketbooks, rather than by people putting up an intellectually honest defense of their position backed by actual facts. And you shouldn't cede ground to these intellectually dishonest and/or ignorant people just to satisfy a logical fallacy.
The correct answer is to study the evidence on both sides dispassionately. If you're really interested in coming to an informed conclusion, you have to put some effort into going to primary sources on this stuff.
I don't really care whether global warming is true or false. It helps As long as everyday people will pay more attention to be economical, consume less, recycle and think green. In my country nobody really cared if a river has dead fish because of an industry dumping waste in the water. After the global warming fiasco this became main news.
there is just as much evidence the climat change is just from natural causes. like the 20 k cycle of the earth pivoting. And the earth has been in way more drastic states in it present and the biosphere has been able to addapt quite wel.
It's quite obscene this debate about is it more important to keep making a fucktone of money or is it more important not to screw the biosphere.
I don't think it's a scientifical debate: it's a compltely political one. There is a reason why Bush administration was against any ecological restriction. The question is: is there anything more important than making money.
We talk about global warming, but forest are being destroyed, we are in the biggest species disparition since millions of years, etc etc etc...
We have a couple of scientist who claim that everything is fine and we should carry on the same way in France. They are all lobby-related, and generally right wingers.
Who cares if some data was changed to strengthen the global warming thesis? We all know that there are plenty of organizations that work towards the opposite direction. The climate will change anyways, the only things that are uncertain are when and how fast. It wouldn't hurt to be prepared a bit earlier than necessary.
On November 22 2009 23:15 spinesheath wrote: Who cares if some data was changed to strengthen the global warming thesis? We all know that there are plenty of organizations that work towards the opposite direction. The climate will change anyways, the only things that are uncertain are when and how fast. It wouldn't hurt to be prepared a bit earlier than necessary.
We are also uncertain that change is necessarily bad.
With all this above to reference, a couple things that I feel I should point out:
-Using the reason temperature hasn't been rising since 1998 as evidence against man-caused global warming is..I tried thinking of a nicer way to say this but its completely ridiculous. The average temperature fluctuates naturally, so taking around a decades worth of data (which is a part of one of these spikes) just isn't something you can use as a reason. It's like saying that raising minimum wage is good for people because that means they'll get paid more money. There is much more context and ramifications you must consider before you can even come to a conclusion. What you want to reference is the general trend of these little spikes, not an individual one
-Carbon levels are at the part when naturally they should be really high. The problem is, with humans, we've set the earth on a course where the ppm won't naturally drop, instead theres enough pouring into the atmosphere and we will continue to go to higher ppm than we've been at in any point in natural history. That is the real problem
-There is a delayed reaction not visible in the graphs. The earth is a massive system with a lot of water. Naturally, the sunlight being trapped by carbon will take some years to really affect temperature. I want to drill this in, so imagine a large, heavy train. It's really hard to get it started, but once its going it will be just as hard if not harder to stop. This is not a commentary on TL's intelligence, I really want to emphasize this: Train = earth, forward motion = mean rising avg temperature, and measurement of ppm = precursor of train's forward motion.
At the rate we're going and the lack of change we (as a species) are showing, we will eventually change the atmosphere with our carbon output. This won't be the end of the world. This is the part that, from my research, scientists agree with. The real questions are how much is our world going to change and what kind of world we'll be left with. It's these two questions they can't agree on
i think in metaphors so if they don't make sense or aren't accurate, just entertain them. my real message doesn't lie in them, its just for the alternative view of the thought
fact 3 : co2 trend follows the temperature trend, lagging it by few years.
conclusion that co2 causes warming of the planet is totally ridiculous and flipped on its head. It is the other way around, rise of temperature causes rise of CO2 not other way around..
Also from that graph if co2 was really affecting the temperature, then the feedback would be positive and that graph would look more exponential, but its not. explanation: CO2 lags the temperature rise on graph. Lets assume co2 causes temperature to rise. Then once temperature rises and then co2 rises, those two working together would cause the temperature to rise even quicker. But this did not happen!!!
So learn how to read graphs instead of presenting them and repeating what you saw on inconvenient truth.
Its not wonder Al Gore declined to have any debates about it with real scientists. He has millions of dollars invested into this. He does not want to be ripped apart.
fact 4 : Sun is the biggest contributor to temperature change
I dont know why the hell the Sun is not being discussed at all in these debates. Any change in its radiation will cause big changes of climate on earth.
fact 5 : Scientists that worked for IPCC, were paid to study global warming and its causes, found plenty of evidence that global warming is not man made, they were fired
sounds like good old witch burning back in the days.
PS as i said im all up for cleaner energy sources but political manipulation of the public through media is ridiculous. And is going very wrong way. We the people should not be manipulated so easily. Global warming is being used to tax people, turn it into a profitable situation.
as long as we keep doing everything for the dumb population we keep on degenerating. I'm a software developer and I always get to hear "develop for the dumbest guy using the application" exactly this way of development made me functionality that was plain wrong for an intelligent person making good thoughts, but because the intelligent person can adapt better to the dumb fuck, I gotta do it for the dumbs anyway.
it's only dumb ppl questioning the glasshouse effect CO2 is causing because they dont understand what is really questionable, but they keep spreading their shit thoughts anyway because someone simplified it down for them so they can understand.
this simplifiying for dumb so they can understand is used often in an educational context (like school) because its often easier to understand something if you let out important stuff. politicians and especially companylobyists use exactly this simplification to manipulate ppl because they know the ppl are to stupid to understand the real deal anyway.
in italy the romans killed the forest because they abused it to make convinient goods such as ships, "horse cars", houses, they didnt think about planting new trees and got fucked by that. but dumb ppl dont like to learn from history, dumb ppl genrally dont like history "im living in the present fuck history".
dumb ppl also dont get that we are currently running on ressources that will be gone in a few decades (10 to 50 years) and this is only the electronic part. this is real as the companys have to pay attention to it not because of ecological issues but because if there are no ressources there wont be any money anymore. im reading a lot of electronical magazines targeting engineeris and business man and what I can read there is sooo much different from the main media. it so funny to see how dumb ppl fall for the tricks the inteligent persons using on them. you can see this on a dayly basis in a supermarket near you. the supermarket is trying to trick you with big pakets but little content, you dont see shit like this at all if you are buying a microcontroller (small processer) because the microcontroller vendor knows that you aint stupid if you buy one and wont ever buy anything from you anymore.
with "dumb ppl" I dont want to discredit anyone, as we are all dumb on some areas. I'd never educate my brother about plants or animals in general as he is bio student, because im dumb in that area compared to him. he knows how to use a computer and can do a lot of stuff with it, but he is fucking dumb compared to me because I studied that shit.
Our founding fathers designed the constitution with the assumption that if two equal and opposite sides spar on something that the sparks created from the friction of the clash are the true and balanced resolve that comes out. keep that in mind with any argument, such as this one. take both sides extreme claims with a grain of salt
a wonderful example of a dumb ppl brain pattern. if you think like this you are abused a lot because you are sooo easy to manipulate. if something is bothering me I go veeery extreme on the otherside and have already halfed your initial correct opinion. so the more extreme i go the more i convince you on my side, can you see how dumb that brainpattern is?
On November 22 2009 23:28 spets1 wrote: PS as i said im all up for cleaner energy sources but political manipulation of the public through media is ridiculous. And is going very wrong way. We the people should not be manipulated so easily. Global warming is being used to tax people, turn it into a profitable situation.
yes, thats exactly why I massivly dislike the idea of CO2 compensation. thats exactly why i hate "green liberal" partys. they always lock economy with ecology and that sucks. you shouldnt throw litter out of your window because you maybe have to pay 100$ then, but because it doesnt fucking belong there.
With all this above to reference, a couple things that I feel I should point out:
-Using the reason temperature hasn't been rising since 1998 as evidence against man-caused global warming is..I tried thinking of a nicer way to say this but its completely ridiculous. The average temperature fluctuates naturally, so taking around a decades worth of data (which is a part of one of these spikes) just isn't something you can use as a reason. It's like saying that raising minimum wage is good for people because that means they'll get paid more money. There is much more context and ramifications you must consider before you can even come to a conclusion. What you want to reference is the general trend of these little spikes, not an individual one
-Carbon levels are at the part when naturally they should be really high. The problem is, with humans, we've set the earth on a course where the ppm won't naturally drop, instead theres enough pouring into the atmosphere and we will continue to go to higher ppm than we've been at in any point in natural history. That is the real problem
-There is a delayed reaction not visible in the graphs. The earth is a massive system with a lot of water. Naturally, the sunlight being trapped by carbon will take some years to really affect temperature. I want to drill this in, so imagine a large, heavy train. It's really hard to get it started, but once its going it will be just as hard if not harder to stop. This is not a commentary on TL's intelligence, I really want to emphasize this: Train = earth, forward motion = mean rising avg temperature, and measurement of ppm = precursor of train's forward motion.
At the rate we're going and the lack of change we (as a species) are showing, we will eventually change the atmosphere with our carbon output. This won't be the end of the world. This is the part that, from my research, scientists agree with. The real questions are how much is our world going to change and what kind of world we'll be left with. It's these two questions they can't agree on
i think in metaphors so if they don't make sense or aren't accurate, just entertain them. my real message doesn't lie in them, its just for the alternative view of the thought
fact 3 : co2 trend follows the temperature trend, lagging it by few years.
conclusion that co2 causes warming of the planet is totally ridiculous and flipped on its head. It is the other way around, rise of temperature causes rise of CO2 not other way around..
Also from that graph if co2 was really affecting the temperature, then the feedback would be positive and that graph would look more exponential, but its not. explanation: CO2 lags the temperature rise on graph. Lets assume co2 causes temperature to rise. Then once temperature rises and then co2 rises, those two working together would cause the temperature to rise even quicker. But this did not happen!!!
So learn how to read graphs instead of presenting them and repeating what you saw on inconvenient truth.
Its not wonder Al Gore declined to have any debates about it with real scientists. He has millions of dollars invested into this. He does not want to be ripped apart.
fact 4 : Sun is the biggest contributor to temperature change
I dont know why the hell the Sun is not being discussed at all in these debates. Any change in its radiation will cause big changes of climate on earth.
fact 5 : Scientists that worked for IPCC, were paid to study global warming and its causes, found plenty of evidence that global warming is not man made, they were fired
sounds like good old witch burning back in the days.
PS as i said im all up for cleaner energy sources but political manipulation of the public through media is ridiculous. And is going very wrong way. We the people should not be manipulated so easily. Global warming is being used to tax people, turn it into a profitable situation.
Holy shit... scrubs these days =,=
@fact3: GUESS WHAT: the Milankovitch cycle and greenhouse effect ARE working together in a vicious cycle of CO2 and temperature rise. I don't know what you mean by "But this did not happen!" because it is happening right now. Also, Al Gore declined to have any debates about global warming because he is merely a political figure who supports fighting global warming, rather than a climatologist.
@fact4: The sun is not being discussed in these debates because it's assumed. Any minor changes in the radiation given off will be nearly unnoticeable due to the earth's magnetic field deflection.
@fact5: Prove it? What evidence did they have? Merely stating that there exists such evidence is not evidence in itself.
fact 3 : co2 trend follows the temperature trend, lagging it by few years.
conclusion that co2 causes warming of the planet is totally ridiculous and flipped on its head. It is the other way around, rise of temperature causes rise of CO2 not other way around..
Also from that graph if co2 was really affecting the temperature, then the feedback would be positive and that graph would look more exponential, but its not. explanation: CO2 lags the temperature rise on graph. Lets assume co2 causes temperature to rise. Then once temperature rises and then co2 rises, those two working together would cause the temperature to rise even quicker. But this did not happen!!!
So learn how to read graphs instead of presenting them and repeating what you saw on inconvenient truth.
Its not wonder Al Gore declined to have any debates about it with real scientists. He has millions of dollars invested into this. He does not want to be ripped apart.
fact 4 : Sun is the biggest contributor to temperature change
I dont know why the hell the Sun is not being discussed at all in these debates. Any change in its radiation will cause big changes of climate on earth.
According to the PMOD at the World Radiation center, the suns irradiance hasn't increased since 1978 Link
fact 5 : Scientists that worked for IPCC, were paid to study global warming and its causes, found plenty of evidence that global warming is not man made, they were fired
sounds like good old witch burning back in the days.
No idea about this one, as I don't really care anyway. Such sensationalist stuff is hard to believe, it all sounds to come from some Hollywood movie.
the government wants to distract you with these dumb issues in which we have little control over to keep their generation's income, instead of actually making the changes the newer, willing generation wants
These graphs are from the government.. If they will cherrypick data from other sets, it is likely they did it to this one, as it is for the public to see.
It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
On November 22 2009 11:38 TanGeng wrote: Really? what about the comedy of errors in the financial markets? How do all financial institutions in the world make the same stupid mistake at the same exact time?
Haven't read the rest of the thread. You ask a very interesting question. There is one explanation commonly accepted.
The people controlling the financial institutions were acting in their own self interest, and not in the interest of the firm they were controlling.
I personally do not find this to be a particularly satisfactory explanation for such a massive failure on such a massive scale. It's been pretty common talk in society lately, that CEOs get excessive salaries and that they don't act in their firm's interest. This is not limited to the financial sector. Perhaps some CEOs can get away with making decisions bad for the company and good for themselves, but not even close to "many" and absolutely not all. What is different here to make the systems that have been in place to check up on CEOs so suddenly fail, not in a number of isolated cases, but so massively?
I'd be much more interested in an explanation that can explain the global failure in terms of the prisoner dilemma. In case you don't know what that is, I'll explain it here briefly.
A murder has been committed by two people. The police is pretty sure who the murderers are, but doesn't have enough evidence to jail them. Fortunately, the two commit a minor crime allowing the police to arrest them.
The police offers the prisoners the following deal: we know you committed that murder. We just don't have enough evidence to convict you. If you confess and your accomplice doesn't, you will go free as crown witness and we will jail him for ten years. If you don't confess and your accomplice does, we will jail you for ten years and he will go free as crown witness. If you both confess, I don't need a crown witness, and you'll both go to jail for eight years. Finally, if neither of you confess, then we can only jail you for at most two years for the minor crime we convicted you on.
If both prisoners act in their own interest, they will both confess, giving a total jail time of 16 years, the worst possible "group" result! However, each of their individual results is better than if they didn't confess.
The primary error of banks was lending too much money out. Maybe if every competitor is lending out too much and too easily, then you have two choices: lend out unsafely as well or lose a lot of money because of a disadvantaged market position. If nothing happens, then you are better off than before because you lent out unsafely - you were able to keep you market position. If something happens, it will happen to all the other banks too, so you are still able to keep your relative market position.
If that's how it works, then banks that follow the aggressive lending strategy are more likely to get a dominant market position than banks that follow a less aggressive lending strategy, just because of the way our banking system is set up. And that, in turn, makes it inevitable that the banking system is going to fail, the worst possible group result.
I doubt this analysis is correct. The analogy to the prisoner's dilemma is problematic because there is no blind one-off all-or-nothing decision to be made on a market-wide level. Financial institutions can control the amount of risk exposure they are exposed to a very fine grain and they develop a track record with their competitors. Developing a nasty reputation among competitors would be damaging in the long run.
The possibility being posed is better described as a price war between oligopolies. Even then oligopolies usually price signal each other as to avoid triggering price war. Think of what might happen when a series of 50 prisoner's dilemmas are posed to the same two people. They can signal each other through their decisions.
Yet the players in the primary and secondary financial industry can't fall into the category of oligopolies. There are too many individual firms for oligopolies to price signal to each other. They get undercut by the other competitors in the market. The only oligopolies in the financial markets are the central banks and they're not making decisions in the primary and secondary markets. (well they weren't before - that might have changed.)
The situation also runs counter to the experiences of the 19th century where Citigroup was known as one of the most conservative players in the banking industry and in the long run was wildly successful. Some of the other banks varied their risks bit by bit but all the big players JP Morgan et al were on the conservative side of risk taking. Perhaps the 19th century is a different environment but there doesn't seem to be any innate systemic flaws with the banking industry - and this was in a more deregulated environment.
On November 23 2009 00:56 Biff The Understudy wrote: It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
In the US big government is better connected with big business than with the people. There is reason to be afraid of big government because it is the corporate state.
As far as I know GE is the primary backer of global warming theory in the US. They have made a lot of investments into green technologies and stands to gain more from acceptance of Global Warming than its refutation. Likewise the financial industries would love to create a new market for their services in cap and trade indulgences.
On November 22 2009 11:36 WhiteNights wrote: Every field has bad apples, but an entire field of bad apples is unheard of.
Really? what about the comedy of errors in the financial markets? How do all financial institutions in the world make the same stupid mistake at the same exact time?
The trouble and difficulty with economics is that economics is not a science. It would make a lot more sense for a field that is overrun with fundamentally unpredictable phenomena to meet with an overarching lapse in judgment.
However, in a scientific field, it is pretty much impossible for everyone to agree on something that is just plain wrong. They often agree on things that are incomplete (e.g. Newton's laws vs. relativity, quantum mechanics vs. classical mechanics), but not fundamentally wrong. I can pretty much guarantee that if there was any real debate among scientists in a particular field (e.g. climate and atmospheric sciences), then the journals would consist of roughly half the scientists studying "what if x is a problem?" and the other half "what if x wasn't a problem?" and each would treat their paper as a proposition. At the end they would draw observable conclusions, and at some point down the line one set of conclusions would prove more accurate than the other, and the debate would be over.
Basically, what I'm saying is: it isn't proper to compare misunderstanding in a fundamentally misunderstood field with misunderstanding in a fundamentally understood field.
I'm pretty sure Climatology falls under the category of misunderstood field. It's based on aggregate thermodynamics. They can't even predict what will happen in weather - a span of three days even!!! On top of that, most of what is providing all the scare are computer models of GSE, expansion of oceanic water columns, etc.
Science might be neat and clean at the high school level, but it's quite messy at the cutting edge.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
The scientific community at large agrees that the hottest year on record was 1998 and that over the past decade there has been a net decrease in global temperatures.
Don't pull bullshit out of your ass. There is still a lot of debate going on regarding exactly what factors have influenced global temperatures and how much of it is man-produced. The media doesn't cover this because it's not a fashionable discussion. It neither induces fear and sensationalism nor does it adhere to the trend in pop culture to be more "green." (And don't doubt for a second that I think the desire to be green is admirable, but there are so many things we do that we claim are "green" that simply aren't. The enviornmental movement at large is a sham and a lie, which is extremely disheartening since there are some various serious environmental issues that get wrapped up in this laughable game.)
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
The scientific community at large agrees that the hottest year on record was 1998 and that over the past decade there has been a net decrease in global temperatures.
Yes, there has been a net decrease (it is not as warm as it was in 1998.) However, finding the linear trend by regression on 1998-2007 and 1999-2008 on GISTEMP (surface air temperature), GISTEMP (meteorological), and HADCRUT yields a (small) positive trend when run over either of these years. And choosing 1998 as your start year (the hottest year on record) will obviously make the upward trend look less than it is. But even if it did yield a negative trend, that is not evidence that global warming has stopped, paused, or reversed.
On November 23 2009 02:16 Mortality wrote: Don't pull bullshit out of your ass. There is still a lot of debate going on regarding exactly what factors have influenced global temperatures and how much of it is man-produced. The media doesn't cover this because it's not a fashionable discussion.
Yes, there is discussion of precisely and exactly how much methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide have to play in the scientific literature, but there is no disagreement that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the most significant factor involved.
I'm just saying, if I was a scientist studying the climate, and I'd been ignored my entire life because no one gives a fuck about my field... Well, I'm just saying that if something like global warming came up, something that got me grant money and made at least some people interested in what I have to say... Well, I'm just saying I'd probably try to hold onto it, you know, devote some resources into that area of research... For the good of humanity, you know.
I would say that we have a pretty obvious cause right here.
And recently, with Somalian piracy exploding, the average global temperature has gone down! Genius!
It 5x cheaper to relocate everyone on earth than to bring CO2 levels down to levels where it, according to scientists, will no longer cause global warming. We can do little things that don't hurt the economy now, such as increasing heat efficiency using more heat-retaining buildings, but eventually we will run out of "cute tricks" and the only way we can further cut CO2 levels is massive cuts in production. Hybrids and "efficient" methods will only cut CO2 levels so much. To see any major cuts in CO2, we must destroy the global economy. Is it worth it to save our beaches? I don't know.
On November 23 2009 03:49 Failsafe wrote: I'm just saying, if I was a scientist studying the climate, and I'd been ignored my entire life because no one gives a fuck about my field... Well, I'm just saying that if something like global warming came up, something that got me grant money and made at least some people interested in what I have to say... Well, I'm just saying I'd probably try to hold onto it, you know, devote some resources into that area of research... For the good of humanity, you know.
I haven't met a scientist yet who gives a flying fuck about the public opinion on his/her research =p. Most consider "the public" annoying and prone to misunderstandings. They want to impress their collegues (in their field), not random ppl on the streets. And if a new climatologist managed to produce a working believable theory that explains current phenomena without invoking global warming dues partly to humans he would have 1000s of quotations within the year so don'tthink there isn't incentive. Emphasis here on believable, theories like that are produced all the time, none so far has been good enough to win the majority over.
The subject of this thread erroneously refers to the authors of the exposed emails as "scientists." They are not scientists, they are frauds who produce junk and propaganda at taxpayers' expense. Falsification of results is the most serious breach of the principle on which the scientific profession is founded: an absolute commitment to the truth.
There is no consensus on "global warming". Freeman Dyson, the second greatest living physicist (after Murray Gell-Mann), has been writing on the subject lately and is a harsh critic of the warming thesis. The Earth's climate is an incredibly complex system; it cannot be modeled accurately with the current level of knowledge and computing ability. If changes in the Earth's climate could be forecast for the next decade, then so could the behavior of global financial markets.
On the other hand, if there is global warming, the Islamic statelet of Maldives shall be the first to go under
On November 23 2009 05:22 HnR)hT wrote: The subject of this thread erroneously refers to the authors of the exposed emails as "scientists." They are not scientists, they are frauds who produce junk and propaganda at taxpayers' expense. Falsification of results is the most serious breach of the principle on which the scientific profession is founded: an absolute commitment to the truth.
There is no consensus on "global warming". Freeman Dyson, the second greatest living physicist (after Murray Gell-Mann), has been writing on the subject lately and is a harsh critic of the warming thesis. The Earth's climate is an incredibly complex system; it cannot be modeled accurately with the current level of knowledge and computing ability. If changes in the Earth's climate could be forecast for the next decade, then so could the behavior of global financial markets.
On the other hand, if there is global warming, the Islamic statelet of Maldives shall be the first to go under
You are right: as we say in my country:
"Tout va bien Madame la Marquise"
(and long life to the taxpayer -as if it was a problem for the taxpayer rather than the oil companies, hahaha-)
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
I'm sure the thousand of dead children in Africa will be delighted we put up some windmills to stop the water from flooding our basements.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
I'm sure the thousand of dead children in Africa will be delighted we put up some windmills to stop the water from flooding our basements.
Do you know that Thirld World country are the one who are going to suffer the most from global warming?
And the starving children in Africa may benefit that we have a good reason to question the system which put his country in the sad state in which it is now.
Has there actually been found proof of falsifying scientific data in those emails? So far all claims ive seen have been false and based on misunderstanding.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
The scientific community at large agrees that the hottest year on record was 1998 and that over the past decade there has been a net decrease in global temperatures.
Yes, there has been a net decrease (it is not as warm as it was in 1998.) However, finding the linear trend by regression on 1998-2007 and 1999-2008 on GISTEMP (surface air temperature), GISTEMP (meteorological), and HADCRUT yields a (small) positive trend when run over either of these years. And choosing 1998 as your start year (the hottest year on record) will obviously make the upward trend look less than it is. But even if it did yield a negative trend, that is not evidence that global warming has stopped, paused, or reversed.
On November 23 2009 02:16 Mortality wrote: Don't pull bullshit out of your ass. There is still a lot of debate going on regarding exactly what factors have influenced global temperatures and how much of it is man-produced. The media doesn't cover this because it's not a fashionable discussion.
Yes, there is discussion of precisely and exactly how much methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide have to play in the scientific literature, but there is no disagreement that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the most significant factor involved.
Really? Because recent research has shown that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have followed, rather than preceeded, increases in global temperature throughout the geological record. In fact you can even see this in the graphs another user posted if you look carefully enough. It's something you would probably dismiss as a trick of the eye, but it's something that has scientists baffled.
If one looks at these data in finer detail, as shown in Figure 4, it becomes evident that temperature is driving the carbon dioxide concentration, not the other way around.
But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.
Wait, what? Yes. Take a good look at the graphs.
Clearly it's not such a simple "cause and effect" relationship.
Do a bit more reading before making such strong statements that are not so easily backed up. You know what the mass media has told you, but the mass media itself has an agenda it follows.
Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
The scientific community at large agrees that the hottest year on record was 1998 and that over the past decade there has been a net decrease in global temperatures.
Yes, there has been a net decrease (it is not as warm as it was in 1998.) However, finding the linear trend by regression on 1998-2007 and 1999-2008 on GISTEMP (surface air temperature), GISTEMP (meteorological), and HADCRUT yields a (small) positive trend when run over either of these years. And choosing 1998 as your start year (the hottest year on record) will obviously make the upward trend look less than it is. But even if it did yield a negative trend, that is not evidence that global warming has stopped, paused, or reversed.
On November 23 2009 02:16 Mortality wrote: Don't pull bullshit out of your ass. There is still a lot of debate going on regarding exactly what factors have influenced global temperatures and how much of it is man-produced. The media doesn't cover this because it's not a fashionable discussion.
Yes, there is discussion of precisely and exactly how much methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide have to play in the scientific literature, but there is no disagreement that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the most significant factor involved.
Really? Because recent research has shown that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have followed, rather than preceeded, increases in global temperature throughout the geological record. In fact you can even see this in the graphs another user posted if you look carefully enough. It's something you would probably dismiss as a trick of the eye, but it's something that has scientists baffled.
If one looks at these data in finer detail, as shown in Figure 4, it becomes evident that temperature is driving the carbon dioxide concentration, not the other way around.
But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.
Wait, what? Yes. Take a good look at the graphs.
Clearly it's not such a simple "cause and effect" relationship.
And if we look at a more long term geological record, we see that in the long term, the graphs don't match up very well at all.
Yes, in geological timescales, frequently CO2 has lagged temperature in rising. Previous climate changes have been driven by many things which were not CO2 such as Milankovitch cycles (shorter term), continental drift, plate tectonics (longer term), the movement of the sun around the galaxy (even longer term), the development of life (you get the picture), and changes in solar irradiance (etc).
However, the basis for the theory that the unprecedented recent modern warming is driven by CO2 is not in "this has happened in the past so it will happen in the future." The timescales for previous drivers of climate operate on thousands or millions of years, none of which can explain current warming. The anthropogenic theory provides a satisfactory explanation, and it really has no competition when it comes to alternative explanations (sun and cosmic ray levels which, while they may affect climate, have changed very little in the last 100 years, as well as being inadequate to explain why temperature shifts of this speed and magnitude have not occurred in the past.)
The fact that CO2 affects temperature is well established by such things as the existence of the greenhouse effect and radiation experiments. Scientists have attempted to determine to what degree CO2 effects is true through atmospheric modeling based on the thermal and optical properties of the various gases in our atmosphere.
On November 23 2009 07:23 Mortality wrote: Do a bit more reading before making such strong statements that are not so easily backed up. You know what the mass media has told you, but the mass media itself has an agenda it follows.
I don't post based on what the mass media has told me (I don't really follow mass media at all because I would rather play Starcraft than watch television.)
To everyone, just not you; here's something from the American Institute of Physics (the United States' largest organization of physicists) that provides a brief introduction to the historical background on the discovery of global warming.
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
Ok. So let's get this straight. You believe that the factors you outline in your post explain why, and I quote here from the Royal Society's briefing on climate change, "the science academies of the G8 nations and of China, India and Brazil" are all continuing to endorse a model they apparently know to be unsupported by "the new data"?
And the media also know this but are keeping it "on the down low"?
I mean, I am trying really hard here to avoid being facetious. But it is difficult.
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
Ok. So let's get this straight. You believe that the factors you outline in your post explain why, and I quote here from the Royal Society's briefing on climate change, "the science academies of the G8 nations and of China, India and Brazil" are all continuing to endorse a model they apparently know to be unsupported by "the new data"?
And the media also know this but are keeping it "on the down low"?
I mean, I am trying really hard here to avoid being facetious. But it is difficult.
Remember, there is a huge conflict of interests here. If the government (who funds much of this research) is successful in convincing the population in this false problem, they have free reign to justify controlling every aspect of people's lives.
Its no different than saying there is a terrorist in every shadow and around every corner...therefore we must take away people's freedoms. Only this time, in addition to taking away people's freedoms, they get to control the entire economy as well, and only let their own boys have enough carbon credits, and shut the rest down.
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
I laughed.
So, scientists have huge interest to make a global conspiracy, helped by the medias of the whole world in order to have more credit. Is that serious?
On the other hand you have whole sectors of the economy who have real fucking huge interest that people don't stop or restrain from consuming their oil / cars / precious wood / whatever crap they sell.
I wonder where is the real economic interest in this discussion and who could really be lying in for economic interest.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
The scientific community at large agrees that the hottest year on record was 1998 and that over the past decade there has been a net decrease in global temperatures.
Yes, there has been a net decrease (it is not as warm as it was in 1998.) However, finding the linear trend by regression on 1998-2007 and 1999-2008 on GISTEMP (surface air temperature), GISTEMP (meteorological), and HADCRUT yields a (small) positive trend when run over either of these years. And choosing 1998 as your start year (the hottest year on record) will obviously make the upward trend look less than it is. But even if it did yield a negative trend, that is not evidence that global warming has stopped, paused, or reversed.
On November 23 2009 02:16 Mortality wrote: Don't pull bullshit out of your ass. There is still a lot of debate going on regarding exactly what factors have influenced global temperatures and how much of it is man-produced. The media doesn't cover this because it's not a fashionable discussion.
Yes, there is discussion of precisely and exactly how much methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide have to play in the scientific literature, but there is no disagreement that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the most significant factor involved.
Really? Because recent research has shown that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have followed, rather than preceeded, increases in global temperature throughout the geological record. In fact you can even see this in the graphs another user posted if you look carefully enough. It's something you would probably dismiss as a trick of the eye, but it's something that has scientists baffled.
If one looks at these data in finer detail, as shown in Figure 4, it becomes evident that temperature is driving the carbon dioxide concentration, not the other way around.
But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.
Wait, what? Yes. Take a good look at the graphs.
Clearly it's not such a simple "cause and effect" relationship.
And if we look at a more long term geological record, we see that in the long term, the graphs don't match up very well at all.
Yes, in geological timescales, frequently CO2 has lagged temperature in rising. Previous climate changes have been driven by many things which were not CO2 such as Milankovitch cycles (shorter term), continental drift, plate tectonics (longer term), the movement of the sun around the galaxy (even longer term), the development of life (you get the picture), and changes in solar irradiance (etc).
However, the basis for the theory that the unprecedented recent modern warming is driven by CO2 is not in "this has happened in the past so it will happen in the future." The timescales for previous drivers of climate operate on thousands or millions of years, none of which can explain current warming. The anthropogenic theory provides a satisfactory explanation, and it really has no competition when it comes to alternative explanations (sun and cosmic ray levels which, while they may affect climate, have changed very little in the last 100 years, as well as being inadequate to explain why temperature shifts of this speed and magnitude have not occurred in the past.)
The fact that CO2 affects temperature is well established by such things as the existence of the greenhouse effect and radiation experiments. Scientists have attempted to determine to what degree CO2 effects is true through atmospheric modeling based on the thermal and optical properties of the various gases in our atmosphere.
On November 23 2009 07:23 Mortality wrote: Do a bit more reading before making such strong statements that are not so easily backed up. You know what the mass media has told you, but the mass media itself has an agenda it follows.
I don't post based on what the mass media has told me (I don't really follow mass media at all because I would rather play Starcraft than watch television.)
To everyone, just not you; here's something from the American Institute of Physics (the United States' largest organization of physicists) that provides a brief introduction to the historical background on the discovery of global warming.
I agree that solar radiation has not adequately accounted for recent fluctuations in global temperature. Clearly there are other factors, possibly man-made, more likely man influenced.
However, the theory regarding CO2 has been failing to yield the desired results. We've clearly seen that it has not held true that CO2 drove global temperatures in the geological record and recent models have failed to accurately predict many current phenomena, most notably the decrease in global temperatures over the past decade, despite an increase in global CO2 levels throughout that time scale.
It should be noted that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas we produce.
It should be noted, reflected upon, and further studied that atmospheric cycles are largely driven by living organisms other than us and we have little to no idea of how we have affected all of that. It should also be noted that it is possible that non-atmospheric pollution has served as the primary driver for global warming.
And it should be noted that we still know very little and everything we know might be wrong. After all, we've only had such sophisticated measuring equipment for a very, very short time frame with regards to the geological record.
In short, I am questioning the theory of CO2 serving as the driving control mechanism for environmental changes, but I am not offering a competing theory. I would like to see more of the chips fall in place first. For a model to serve as a working theory, it must be able to make accurate predictions. No model to date has done so.
And I'll check out your link when I have more time. As is I've spent too long on here.
On November 23 2009 01:34 TanGeng wrote: I'm pretty sure Climatology falls under the category of misunderstood field. It's based on aggregate thermodynamics. They can't even predict what will happen in weather - a span of three days even!!! On top of that, most of what is providing all the scare are computer models of GSE, expansion of oceanic water columns, etc.
Science might be neat and clean at the high school level, but it's quite messy at the cutting edge.
Well, weather is a chaotic system, but that doesn't mean it's misunderstood or unpredictable. There is a parameter for a chaotic system that tells you how errors in initial measurements propagate through time, and for weather you can do pretty well in general up to 4 days past the time of your initial measurements. If we get instruments that drastically improve our measurements or we take many times more measurements, that number will go up. Chaos is not unpredictable in the sense that economics is unpredictable. It's just HARD to get an accurate prediction for long times into the future.
But that is just 'local' weather systems. Which way will the wind be blowing? Which way will hot and cold areas move towards/away from? These kinds of things determine whether it will rain or not and what you can expect the temperature to be.
But there are other aspects to the science as well, aspects that have repeating patterns. The temperature in February will be lower than the temperature today (in November). How can I possibly make that statement? That's many months ahead, much larger time span than 4 days. But I can make the statement because I know that there is a repetitious pattern based on the Earth-Sun distance.
Similarly, there are other repeating phenomenon that are themselves well-understood (various geological phenomenona and other things like the polar vortex etc.). Data from these things has long-term repeating patterns that are 'immune' in a sense to the chaotic nature of the 'local' weather occuring around them (by local, I mean local in time and space).
Scientists do not make claims of stuff happening 1000 years in the future if their data is only good for t + 4 days. That's just not accepted in the scientific arena. Much 'local' weather is chaotic, but there are other global indicators for long-term weather.
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
Ok. So let's get this straight. You believe that the factors you outline in your post explain why, and I quote here from the Royal Society's briefing on climate change, "the science academies of the G8 nations and of China, India and Brazil" are all continuing to endorse a model they apparently know to be unsupported by "the new data"?
And the media also know this but are keeping it "on the down low"?
I mean, I am trying really hard here to avoid being facetious. But it is difficult.
Remember, there is a huge conflict of interests here. If the government (who funds much of this research) is successful in convincing the population in this false problem, they have free reign to justify controlling every aspect of people's lives.
Its no different than saying there is a terrorist in every shadow and around every corner...therefore we must take away people's freedoms. Only this time, in addition to taking away people's freedoms, they get to control the entire economy as well, and only let their own boys have enough carbon credits, and shut the rest down.
So "the government" (presumably of the United States, although I am assuming that all the other governments are in on it too!) was able to get all those big-brained scientists to go along with this because it "funds much of this research"? And this was in order to "justify controlling every aspect of people's lives"?
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
Ok. So let's get this straight. You believe that the factors you outline in your post explain why, and I quote here from the Royal Society's briefing on climate change, "the science academies of the G8 nations and of China, India and Brazil" are all continuing to endorse a model they apparently know to be unsupported by "the new data"?
And the media also know this but are keeping it "on the down low"?
I mean, I am trying really hard here to avoid being facetious. But it is difficult.
Remember, there is a huge conflict of interests here. If the government (who funds much of this research) is successful in convincing the population in this false problem, they have free reign to justify controlling every aspect of people's lives.
Its no different than saying there is a terrorist in every shadow and around every corner...therefore we must take away people's freedoms. Only this time, in addition to taking away people's freedoms, they get to control the entire economy as well, and only let their own boys have enough carbon credits, and shut the rest down.
So "the government" (presumably of the United States, although I am assuming that all the other governments are in on it too!) was able to get all those big-brained scientists to go along with this because it "funds much of this research"? And this was in order to "justify controlling every aspect of people's lives"?
Yes.
People got PhD's so that they could, 20 years down the line, justify increasing taxes.
Don't you see how obvious this is?
Its obviously like those gardeners that went out and planted forests, and now want to preserve them so that they can have nice views at the expense of people who need precious lumber.
On November 23 2009 07:29 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: Apparently there are rumours on the internets that there is a massive conspiracy involving the overwhelming majority of the world's climate experts, who have put aside their PhDs, decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of pages of research in order to help "the liberals" raise taxes.
But back in the real world... maybe I am just hopelessly naive but I can't help but think it a teensy bit unlikely that the Royal Society, the United Kingdom's premier scientific organisation, with a long and illustrious history, along with all the other major scientific institutions of the world, would participate.
It's not a conspiracy, but first: scientists do care about funding and second: it was a good theory at the time it was introduced. The new data just doesn't agree with it. So what do people do? They try to come up with ways to "re-evaluate" new data to fit the model. However, as against doing this as you can tell I clearly am, it's not entirely without merit to do this. The issue is that there's a fine line between looking at new data in a different light and trying to find things in the data that aren't there. And the mass media works real hard to keep these discussion on the down low, because global warming propaganda is a much better sell than real science is.
Ok. So let's get this straight. You believe that the factors you outline in your post explain why, and I quote here from the Royal Society's briefing on climate change, "the science academies of the G8 nations and of China, India and Brazil" are all continuing to endorse a model they apparently know to be unsupported by "the new data"?
And the media also know this but are keeping it "on the down low"?
I mean, I am trying really hard here to avoid being facetious. But it is difficult.
And you do realize that the science academies of all the various nations are quasi-political entities, right?
The CO2 theory currently is the leading theory, but it's a ship that's not doing a good job holding water. But you have to realize that the issue of global warming got politicized before the models were put to the test and now there are big name politicians who have rested their careers on this.
The science academies won't back off on the theory unless they are truly convinced it is wrong. If they waffle on this issue they will lose credibility.
We'll see if the theory withstands the test of time. I'm betting it won't. I do believe we have influenced the environment a great deal, but we're still a long way off from fully realizing, for instance, how water pollution has affected bacterial organisms that influence atmospheric cycles.
Very true, historically, scientists rarely change stance on big issues, only when they have absolutely no choice. Here are some interesting quotes from scientists: + Show Spoiler +
"...the scientist makes use of a whole arsenal of concepts which he imbibed practically with his mother's milk; and seldom if ever is he aware of the eternally problematic character of his concepts. He uses this conceptual material, or, speaking more exactly, these conceptual tools of thought, as something obviously, immutably given; something having an objective value of truth which is hardly even, and in any case not seriously, to be doubted. ...in the interests of science it is necessary over and over again to engage in the critique of these fundamental concepts, in order that we may not unconsciously be ruled by them." -Albert Einstein
"…science is not the danger; scientists encouraged to do bad science to survive are.” … "…changing the way modern science is funded is an enormous undertaking, but it is a necessary one if we want to protect our future. Call it managed risk." -Smith
"Anybody who has studied the history of science or worked as a scientist knows that whenever something novel is discovered or proposed, there is a polarization of scientists, with hostility and bitterness that may last for generations. What wins arguments is scientific fact, and that may change as the years go by. A good example of this is the geological theory of continental drift, as proposed by Wegener in 1912. When I studied geology around 1950, continental drift was acknowledged in my undergraduate textbook as a crank theory. The first serious confirmation was in 1956, and it was finally established as the dominant theory in the early 1970s. Until that time, anybody who admitted that he or she believed in continental drift was the subject of derision and scorn. Sorry, folks, science is not and has never been the 'idealized portrait painted in textbooks'." -Allan Blair
"…I suggest that most revolutions in science have taken place outside the lofty arena of the refereed journals, and with good reason. The philosophy by which these journals govern themselves virtually precludes publication of ideas that challenge an existing consensus." -William K. George
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning." -Max Planck
"We used to be able to say things once; if the message was reasonable, it had a good chance of becoming a permanent part of the structure of the field. Today, a single publication is lost; if we say it only once, it will be presumed that we have changed our mind, and we therefore must publish repeatedly. This further fuels the large publication volume that requires us to repeat." -Rolf Landauer
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible he is very probably wrong." [Clarke's First Law]
In addition, academic funding is such that generally, projects are funded with a very narrow scope and a very specific result is expected. Scientists who don't fit the mold are ostracized and in danger of losing their career.
On November 23 2009 00:56 Biff The Understudy wrote: It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
Perhaps I am just a person who will look up if I am told someone wrote "gullible" on the ceiling but I kind of think I am going to go on believing the considered opinions of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, the science academies of all the G8 nations plus China, India and Brasil, their decades of research, their countless peer-reviewed papers in large numbers of renowned journals and their mountains of data collected thanks to thousands upon thousands of man-hours of painstaking effort across seven continents.
I cant believe that ppl are so keen on having the government or scientists as the evil bastards. Are all brainwashed by companies?
A similar example of science vs companys is the tobacco story. Companys payed scientist to spread lies to be able to keep selling cigs. This lying shit went on for decades but still ppl fall for the companys. Same shit with cosmethic products with their "scientific tests" from labs which are payed from exactly that company. Yeah companys are sooo trustworthy, haha. Companys have repeatedly proven that they should have absolut no influence in Academic research except for the paying (aka only give money no right to speach).
I feel that exact mistrust all the time when I tell freinds about stuff I know for a fact from my education as Programmer f.e. They rather trust a company making ads, although they know that ads are mostly "lying" if you ask them. Brainwashed is the only thing that I can explain such behaviour.
On November 23 2009 00:56 Biff The Understudy wrote: It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
All right. I do want to point out one thing. Stuff like the Kyoto and other climate things have one thing in common. They all require the US to give up the most. Now maybe thats because we're making the most problems, or whatever. But you can't deny that when every global warming combat plan invloves the US getting the short end of the stick, we have a right to be a little suspicious.
And I would like to point out that 1. The US currently uses more of a fascist-socialist system, it's heavily government influenced 2. The amoral capitalistic system seems to have worked out fairly well for us. I recently visited France. I went in thinking that it was a pretty prosperous, wealthy nation. Then I visited the hospitals, drove on the roads, walked through the streets of Marseilles. And maybe the US has some problems, but France has a heck of a lot more.
And get your facts straight. Most people with 401k have stock have it in that form. Which accounts for a significant amount of the American population.
Um, I think everybody on both sides is way oversimplifying the matter. The fundamental problem is that there are many levels between what government policy is and what the facts are. The chain of information, as I see it, is:
"Reality" of global warming --> Statistical data --> Scientists conclusions --> Scientists conclusions as understood by politicians --> Politicians creating public policy on the matter (often lumped with their other agendas)
At every level, there can be misunderstandings and conflicts of interest. Just as scientists are susceptible to misinterpreting data, so are politicians susceptible to using (and understanding) data to their advantage. True, some scientists are probably bought with research funding, and true, some politicians probably truly believe that global warming is a disaster, but the reality is that most people lie somewhere in between. Considering this, and toss in the whole controversy about biased statistical data bases, and you have a disaster of epic proportions.
On November 23 2009 08:52 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: I cant believe that ppl are so keen on having the government or scientists as the evil bastards. Are all brainwashed by companies?
A similar example of science vs companys is the tobacco story. Companys payed scientist to spread lies to be able to keep selling cigs. This lying shit went on for decades but still ppl fall for the companys. Same shit with cosmethic products with their "scientific tests" from labs which are payed from exactly that company. Yeah companys are sooo trustworthy, haha. Companys have repeatedly proven that they should have absolut no influence in Academic research except for the paying (aka only give money no right to speach).
I feel that exact mistrust all the time when I tell freinds about stuff I know for a fact from my education as Programmer f.e. They rather trust a company making ads, although they know that ads are mostly "lying" if you ask them. Brainwashed is the only thing that I can explain such behaviour.
What the hell. you claim that Americans are all brainwashed by companies, and then go on to talk about how companies are controlling academia? If you haven't noticed, the company's are doing a terrible job, then. The overwhelming majority of public opinion and acedemic opinion, from my perspective, seems to be that Global warming is an uncontroversial fact.
In fact, a significant number of the commercials I see on TV are related to "going green" or whatever. If anything, most of the companies are probably benifiting from mass hysteria about global warming. they have an easy way to elicit emotions- just mention something about "clean energy" or "carbon neutral" or "enironmentally friendly" and a good portion of the population automatically feels like their product is the responsible thing to buy.
And I would like to point out that its not the scientists anybody is calling evil. It is government agendas. How many millions has the US government spent to try to uncontroverially prove global warming? How much has it spent to try to disprove it? zero.
When global warming is being flooded with government money, endlessly orated on by politicians, and taught as truth in elementary schools, people begin to feel worried. Right now we have not been presented with the antithesis or synthesis on global warming, just the thesis. Until the day comes when Academia is free to draw its own conclusions without politics being a significant controlling factor, we have a right to harbor suspicion about the "truth" that our rulers proclaim.
On November 23 2009 00:56 Biff The Understudy wrote: It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
All right. I do want to point out one thing. Stuff like the Kyoto and other climate things have one thing in common. They all require the US to give up the most. Now maybe thats because we're making the most problems, or whatever. But you can't deny that when every global warming combat plan invloves the US getting the short end of the stick, we have a right to be a little suspicious.
And I would like to point out that 1. The US currently uses more of a fascist-socialist system, it's heavily government influenced 2. The amoral capitalistic system seems to have worked out fairly well for us. I recently visited France. I went in thinking that it was a pretty prosperous, wealthy nation. Then I visited the hospitals, drove on the roads, walked through the streets of Marseilles. And maybe the US has some problems, but France has a heck of a lot more.
And get your facts straight. Most people with 401k have stock have it in that form. Which accounts for a significant amount of the American population.
The USA does the most problems, yes thats why they recieve the biggest blame. The USA has a history of fucking up a lot of stuff not just recent things.
To your first point, I really fail to see what is so bad in a social system. You know, when I'm not punshing your face bleedy it's a social act from me. If your car is broken out in the shit and I take you along with me thats social. Dont you like such stuff? Do you prefer assholes who rather fuck you up? Np for me, I also like beeing asocial and draw graffiti onto companys wall, I give as much a fuck about them as they give about their employes.
2. Wow, what a bullshit example. Lemme guess you are raised in East LA right? Come visit Switzerland we have a Social-Capitalistic market system and our streets > your streets, our medical institutions (hospitals f.e.) > yours. Our public traffic system > your public traffic (do you have any trains running faster than 20 miles an hour? haha). Sure for the rich mutherfuckers the USA has the best streets the best hospitals the whatever you want but you also have a lot of fucked up stuff much like a 3rd world country.
Your last fact with american population and shit, I really dont understand it.
On November 23 2009 00:56 Biff The Understudy wrote: It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
All right. I do want to point out one thing. Stuff like the Kyoto and other climate things have one thing in common. They all require the US to give up the most. Now maybe thats because we're making the most problems, or whatever. But you can't deny that when every global warming combat plan invloves the US getting the short end of the stick, we have a right to be a little suspicious.
"Whatever"? If two people are paying 10% taxes. One person makes a mil dollar a year. The other makes 20g. Is the millionaire suppose to be suspicious of the taxes because he's paying 100g rather than 2g? That's the type of thinking that got Bush cutting taxes for the super rich and screw the rest us.
And I would like to point out that 1. The US currently uses more of a fascist-socialist system, it's heavily government influenced 2. The amoral capitalistic system seems to have worked out fairly well for us. I recently visited France. I went in thinking that it was a pretty prosperous, wealthy nation. Then I visited the hospitals, drove on the roads, walked through the streets of Marseilles. And maybe the US has some problems, but France has a heck of a lot more.
US has worked out well compared to Europe because our geographical location and vast amount of resources. In both world wars, the US made tons of money off of weaponry, while suffering almost nothing in terms of infrastructure within the country. US also has a ridiculous amount of rich, fertile land and a relatively low population.
Also, if you went to French hospitals, then you should realize that they provide affordable health care. And not health care that's impossible to access without good health insurance(or tons of money).
America does indeed have the best healthcare in the world. My father works at a world renowned medical research center. And he can vouch that the some of the richest, most influential people in the world go to his company for their illnesses. They also get bills that 99% of Americans would never be able to pay.
All scientific statistics aside, this years fashion industry experienced some setbacks when it came to the summer because people weren't wearing the light clothing that they normally would have because it was colder this year. Maybe a fluke, or maybe the scientists need to recheck their information. I live on a little atoll 7 degrees north of the equator. I can stand on the east side and see the ocean on the west side. The tides have been lower than they have been in years. 5 years ago this time of year the high tide would be halfway across my back yard. This year, No. Holes in the Ozone, Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, What's next?
WhauzGoodJaggah. When i help people out (like giving somebody a ride because their car is broken down) like sharing my sandwich with somebody, is charity. When the teacher comes by and commands you to share your sandwich, that is socialism.
On November 23 2009 08:36 fight_or_flight wrote: Very true, historically, scientists rarely change stance on big issues, only when they have absolutely no choice. Here are some interesting quotes from scientists: + Show Spoiler +
"...the scientist makes use of a whole arsenal of concepts which he imbibed practically with his mother's milk; and seldom if ever is he aware of the eternally problematic character of his concepts. He uses this conceptual material, or, speaking more exactly, these conceptual tools of thought, as something obviously, immutably given; something having an objective value of truth which is hardly even, and in any case not seriously, to be doubted. ...in the interests of science it is necessary over and over again to engage in the critique of these fundamental concepts, in order that we may not unconsciously be ruled by them." -Albert Einstein
"…science is not the danger; scientists encouraged to do bad science to survive are.” … "…changing the way modern science is funded is an enormous undertaking, but it is a necessary one if we want to protect our future. Call it managed risk." -Smith
"Anybody who has studied the history of science or worked as a scientist knows that whenever something novel is discovered or proposed, there is a polarization of scientists, with hostility and bitterness that may last for generations. What wins arguments is scientific fact, and that may change as the years go by. A good example of this is the geological theory of continental drift, as proposed by Wegener in 1912. When I studied geology around 1950, continental drift was acknowledged in my undergraduate textbook as a crank theory. The first serious confirmation was in 1956, and it was finally established as the dominant theory in the early 1970s. Until that time, anybody who admitted that he or she believed in continental drift was the subject of derision and scorn. Sorry, folks, science is not and has never been the 'idealized portrait painted in textbooks'." -Allan Blair
"…I suggest that most revolutions in science have taken place outside the lofty arena of the refereed journals, and with good reason. The philosophy by which these journals govern themselves virtually precludes publication of ideas that challenge an existing consensus." -William K. George
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning." -Max Planck
"We used to be able to say things once; if the message was reasonable, it had a good chance of becoming a permanent part of the structure of the field. Today, a single publication is lost; if we say it only once, it will be presumed that we have changed our mind, and we therefore must publish repeatedly. This further fuels the large publication volume that requires us to repeat." -Rolf Landauer
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible he is very probably wrong." [Clarke's First Law]
Why don't you tell us where you got these quotations.
In addition, academic funding is such that generally, projects are funded with a very narrow scope and a very specific result is expected. Scientists who don't fit the mold are ostracized and in danger of losing their career.
Scientists that don't perform honest research and shout "conspiracy" are ostracized.
BTW, this whole post stinks of pseudoscience, from the quote mines and you claiming censorship of their point of view.
On November 23 2009 09:45 Balentine wrote: All scientific statistics aside, this years fashion industry experienced some setbacks when it came to the summer because people weren't wearing the light clothing that they normally would have because it was colder this year. Maybe a fluke, or maybe the scientists need to recheck their information. I live on a little atoll 7 degrees north of the equator. I can stand on the east side and see the ocean on the west side. The tides have been lower than they have been in years. 5 years ago this time of year the high tide would be halfway across my back yard. This year, No. Holes in the Ozone, Global Cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, What's next?
hmm, ok but how do you explain the lossses for our mountain railways because they lack snow? How do you explain the massive increas in the snow machine market? At my University of applied science we had to work out concepts of combining Snow Machine lakes to use for electricity production during the summer because those lakes appear more and more.
Oh, you also bring in a personal comparison, I can do that too. I miss my birthdays in the snow, its soon (25.) and it looks much like this year wont bring me any again.
Whats next? How about talking about the current actual problems you cant deny? How about radioactive waste? Reasearch hasnt made even the tiniest step to solve the problem nuclear waste currently is. But we just give a fuck, we rather keep wasting electric energy en masse. How about next we talk about rare ressources like germanium we rely on to make semicondutor products like RAM? Or we could talk about litter, massive overproduction of litter because who gives a fuck?
The problems are right in front of your eyes, you dont need populistic stuff like global warming to see that we fuck up a lot of stuff. Have you ever seen a river comming in blue than purple than yellow any day another color and nice fishys swimming funky with their stomache on the surface, cool huh? You never seen this? Thats very possible, because our parents told them chemical companys that they should control the fuck they let out in the environment, what if they said "oh thats just an illusion" like you do right now?
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
The scientific community at large agrees that the hottest year on record was 1998 and that over the past decade there has been a net decrease in global temperatures.
Yes, there has been a net decrease (it is not as warm as it was in 1998.) However, finding the linear trend by regression on 1998-2007 and 1999-2008 on GISTEMP (surface air temperature), GISTEMP (meteorological), and HADCRUT yields a (small) positive trend when run over either of these years. And choosing 1998 as your start year (the hottest year on record) will obviously make the upward trend look less than it is. But even if it did yield a negative trend, that is not evidence that global warming has stopped, paused, or reversed.
On November 23 2009 02:16 Mortality wrote: Don't pull bullshit out of your ass. There is still a lot of debate going on regarding exactly what factors have influenced global temperatures and how much of it is man-produced. The media doesn't cover this because it's not a fashionable discussion.
Yes, there is discussion of precisely and exactly how much methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide have to play in the scientific literature, but there is no disagreement that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the most significant factor involved.
Really? Because recent research has shown that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have followed, rather than preceeded, increases in global temperature throughout the geological record. In fact you can even see this in the graphs another user posted if you look carefully enough. It's something you would probably dismiss as a trick of the eye, but it's something that has scientists baffled.
If one looks at these data in finer detail, as shown in Figure 4, it becomes evident that temperature is driving the carbon dioxide concentration, not the other way around.
But simple fact is: “No matter what rules temperature, CO2 is easily overruled by other effects, and this CO2-argument falls”. So we are left with graphs showing that CO2 follows temperatures, and no arguments that CO2 even so could be the main driver of temperatures.
Wait, what? Yes. Take a good look at the graphs.
Clearly it's not such a simple "cause and effect" relationship.
And if we look at a more long term geological record, we see that in the long term, the graphs don't match up very well at all.
Yes, in geological timescales, frequently CO2 has lagged temperature in rising. Previous climate changes have been driven by many things which were not CO2 such as Milankovitch cycles (shorter term), continental drift, plate tectonics (longer term), the movement of the sun around the galaxy (even longer term), the development of life (you get the picture), and changes in solar irradiance (etc).
However, the basis for the theory that the unprecedented recent modern warming is driven by CO2 is not in "this has happened in the past so it will happen in the future." The timescales for previous drivers of climate operate on thousands or millions of years, none of which can explain current warming. The anthropogenic theory provides a satisfactory explanation, and it really has no competition when it comes to alternative explanations (sun and cosmic ray levels which, while they may affect climate, have changed very little in the last 100 years, as well as being inadequate to explain why temperature shifts of this speed and magnitude have not occurred in the past.)
The fact that CO2 affects temperature is well established by such things as the existence of the greenhouse effect and radiation experiments. Scientists have attempted to determine to what degree CO2 effects is true through atmospheric modeling based on the thermal and optical properties of the various gases in our atmosphere.
On November 23 2009 07:23 Mortality wrote: Do a bit more reading before making such strong statements that are not so easily backed up. You know what the mass media has told you, but the mass media itself has an agenda it follows.
I don't post based on what the mass media has told me (I don't really follow mass media at all because I would rather play Starcraft than watch television.)
To everyone, just not you; here's something from the American Institute of Physics (the United States' largest organization of physicists) that provides a brief introduction to the historical background on the discovery of global warming.
I agree that solar radiation has not adequately accounted for recent fluctuations in global temperature. Clearly there are other factors, possibly man-made, more likely man influenced.
However, the theory regarding CO2 has been failing to yield the desired results. We've clearly seen that it has not held true that CO2 drove global temperatures in the geological record and recent models have failed to accurately predict many current phenomena, most notably the decrease in global temperatures over the past decade, despite an increase in global CO2 levels throughout that time scale.
It should be noted that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas we produce.
It should be noted, reflected upon, and further studied that atmospheric cycles are largely driven by living organisms other than us and we have little to no idea of how we have affected all of that. It should also be noted that it is possible that non-atmospheric pollution has served as the primary driver for global warming.
And it should be noted that we still know very little and everything we know might be wrong. After all, we've only had such sophisticated measuring equipment for a very, very short time frame with regards to the geological record.
In short, I am questioning the theory of CO2 serving as the driving control mechanism for environmental changes, but I am not offering a competing theory. I would like to see more of the chips fall in place first. For a model to serve as a working theory, it must be able to make accurate predictions. No model to date has done so.
See DefMatrixUltra's post for an explanation of the difference between short-term and long-term predictions of a chaotic system.
CO2 is not the only climate affecter we produce; scientists have also studied the effects of methane, nitrous oxide, other halocarbons, ozone, black carbon, and aerosols, and attempted to quantify them; the results of one such review is here (note the uncertainty bars as well). To say that "we're not one hundred percent certain about this stuff" is true, but concluding "so we might not know anything at all and maybe this is all garbage" is pushing it.
On November 23 2009 08:09 Mortality wrote:And I'll check out your link when I have more time. As is I've spent too long on here.
in addition to fightorfight's comment, the government is a corporation, but a very poorly run corporation. have you ever heard of the 50,000 dollar toilet seats. the current administration set up a website Recovery.org i think and it cost them 17 million dollars. Poorly run and corrupt.
On November 23 2009 09:56 Balentine wrote: WhauzGoodJaggah. When i help people out (like giving somebody a ride because their car is broken down) like sharing my sandwich with somebody, is charity. When the teacher comes by and commands you to share your sandwich, that is socialism.
yes, I know, I dont question that. But my main point is, why you are so afraid of beeing forced to share your sandwich? Or take a better example, you and your classmate and your teacher are in the desert. You have water for 2 days, you are 1 day away from the next river/lake/whatever and you dont share your water with your mate. YOur teacher forces you to share your water. Yeah really, that teacher must be some real devil, sorry I failed to see that.
Or if you would like it the other way arround, why is it bad if I'm forced to share my good stuff(sandwich) but its bad if I share my bad stuff (punching your face bleedy)?
On November 23 2009 09:45 fight_or_flight wrote: And don't forget, the government is a corporation. edit: in response to WhuazGoodJaggah and WoodenSpider
is that some wordjoke or something? what is that aiming at?
Jaggah, there have been massive forest fires in California this year, more than past years. These forest fires were not caused by the world heating up, but by the world cooling down. The cooler temperatures caused this area in california to dry up, making everything more flammable. when my island becomes completely submerged(and i live), will you give me a million dollars? jk a lot of times the southern hemisphere warms up and the northern hemisphere cools. ocean levels are universal. radioactive waste? easy. a space elevator.
wouldn't the railways in Lesotho do better without the snow? next time me, my friend, and our teacher are stuck in the desert, i'll give you my answer. if i didn't share my water my friend and the teacher would probably kill me for it. sharing is an act of kindness and is not often out of nessecity. if i didn't give my classmate a sandwich during lunch hour he wouldn't die of hunger
On November 23 2009 10:15 Balentine wrote: Jaggah, there have been massive forest fires in California this year, more than past years. These forest fires were not caused by the world heating up, but by the world cooling down. The cooler temperatures caused this area in california to dry up, making everything more flammable. when my island becomes completely submerged(and i live), will you give me a million dollars? jk a lot of times the southern hemisphere warms up and the northern hemisphere cools. ocean levels are universal. radioactive waste? easy. a space elevator.
yeah, is that why they burned in the winter? or spring? or fall? hmmm, wasnt it more like they burn in summer when its hot?
On November 23 2009 10:30 Balentine wrote: the point is, most forest fires burn in the summer, but are there more of them now than there were before?
The same way there are stronger hurricanes rather than more hurricanes, there are larger forest fires rather than more forest fires. Good job proving your opposition's point.
On November 23 2009 10:22 Balentine wrote: wouldn't the railways in Lesotho do better without the snow? next time me, my friend, and our teacher are stuck in the desert, i'll give you my answer. if i didn't share my water my friend and the teacher would probably kill me for it. sharing is an act of kindness and is not often out of nessecity. if i didn't give my classmate a sandwich during lunch hour he wouldn't die of hunger
Im not from Lesotho, im swiss. Our railways dont have troubles with snow, sure somtimes a few sparks fly when there is ice on the cable not not a big issue.
Yes, your friend wont die if you dont give him your sandwich, so obviously it would be a stupid law to make that forces you to give him the half. But ppl ARE dying because they have no healthcare an evil evil social healthcare. what a stupid example you made, huh? I'm paying like 100$ every month for health insurance and I went only like 5 times to the doctor in the last 10 years. I also pay like 5% of my income to an "unemployment insurance fund" eventhough I have enough money on the side so I wouldnt really need it. Stuff like this is needed because ppl are egoistic fucks and only see how useful such stuff is if they suffer hard times where they would need such a thing.
The huge problem with such systems is not the system itself (evil socialst stuff) but the abuse comming with it. As I said, ppl are egoistic fucks, in switzerland (also germany or france) this is a big problem with ppl abusing "invalid insurance fund" they abuse healthcare stuff they abuse "unemployment insurance fund", but it still works because not everyone is abusing it.
such stuff is way more complex than: "it's socialst evil stuff, no need"
You're Swiss and you're complaining that the US is too capitalistic!!?? wtf... Take a good look at your own country and then take a look at the US. Switzerland is far more free market than the US.
Tax rates - Swiss is lower! Unemployment insurance - US has it! mandatory insurance - Massachusetts has it! you name it and some place in the US will have it, and it won't just be covering the piddly 9 million or so people in Switzerland.
You've got no perspective on the size. Because this is 300+ million people in the US. So the question isn't whether or not Switzerland has done it and is socialising costs among 9 million people. Instead it's like socialising cost among all countries of the European continent. Think about that for a moment.
On November 23 2009 10:22 Balentine wrote: wouldn't the railways in Lesotho do better without the snow? next time me, my friend, and our teacher are stuck in the desert, i'll give you my answer. if i didn't share my water my friend and the teacher would probably kill me for it. sharing is an act of kindness and is not often out of nessecity. if i didn't give my classmate a sandwich during lunch hour he wouldn't die of hunger
On November 23 2009 10:24 Balentine wrote: i'm not afraid to share, if your sister came into your room and started sharing your money your wouldn't be all that exited
yeah, is that why they burned in the winter? or spring? or fall? hmmm, wasnt it more like they burn in summer when its hot?
did you know the far north and in antarctica these places are labeled as desert? global warming would affect all seasons, regardless of temperature
the point is, most forest fires burn in the summer, but are there more of them now than there were before?
can you please not tripple post, its bad to read than.
sorry, but you're wrong on that one. My brother shared a lot of stuff from me with others I aint got a problem with that. I give away my last cig I give away my last papes, I can understand if thats hard to grasp, but thats how I was raised. I always shared all I had with others, maybe because my other brother (older) never wanted to share shit with me so I wanted to do it different than him.
yes I know about the ice desert. and it doesnt fucking matter if its a desert as you would also die in the forest without water, doesnt make any sense to talk about that anyway, is that some kind of distraction?
yes, forest fires have increased a lot since the 70s (if i recall correctly by the factor 4, but its definitly more). thats not even the question (maybe for you), because that is acuratly mesurable data. the question is why are they increasing, is it because more ppl are dumb fucks and throw away cigs and park their car on dry leaves so that the hot "engine" will cause a fire? or is it because the summers are getting hotter so the wood is drier and will burn better.
On November 23 2009 10:22 Balentine wrote: wouldn't the railways in Lesotho do better without the snow? next time me, my friend, and our teacher are stuck in the desert, i'll give you my answer. if i didn't share my water my friend and the teacher would probably kill me for it. sharing is an act of kindness and is not often out of nessecity. if i didn't give my classmate a sandwich during lunch hour he wouldn't die of hunger
On November 23 2009 10:50 TanGeng wrote: You're Swiss and you're complaining that the US is too capitalistic!!?? wtf... Take a good look at your own country and then take a look at the US. Switzerland is far more free market than the US.
Tax rates - Swiss is lower! Unemployment insurance - US has it! mandatory insurance - Massachusetts has it! you name it and some place in the US will have it, and it won't just be covering the piddly 9 million or so people in Switzerland.
You've got no perspective on the size. Because this is 300+ million people in the US. So the question isn't whether or not Switzerland has done it and is socialising costs among 9 million people. Instead it's like socialising cost among all countries of the European continent. Think about that for a moment.
tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg USA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose.
"mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose.
also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks.
switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has?
P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh?
On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg USA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose.
"mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose.
also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks.
switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has?
P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh?
You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost.
The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks."
Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism.
sorry, but you're wrong on that one. My brother shared a lot of stuff from me with others I aint got a problem with that. I give away my last cig I give away my last papes, I can understand if thats hard to grasp, but thats how I was raised. I always shared all I had with others, maybe because my other brother (older) never wanted to share shit with me so I wanted to do it different than him.
exactly, you are a very generous person, but that is you, not some faceless bureaucrat. I do not want some government bureaucrat deciding who gets my money. So what if the person is a drug junkie or a do-nothin, they still get your money. sry, new here, no more triple posting
On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg USA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose.
"mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose.
also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks.
switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has?
P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh?
You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost.
The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks."
Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism.
massachusetts is not the entire USA, thats what counts. we have different "states" too with different systems to some degree but manditory insurance is all arround switzerland. as I said, USA and switzerland are systemwise very similar, the french part is way more socialistic than the german or italian part f.e. its just the absolute size that is different.
wow, the USA has something socialistic? is it good? do you layk?
but again, why is it relevant weather the country I live in is more social than your country? Yes, switzerland is very capitalisitc, so? does that change the fact that the USA is more capitalistic? does it change that both are over capitalistic?
sorry, but you're wrong on that one. My brother shared a lot of stuff from me with others I aint got a problem with that. I give away my last cig I give away my last papes, I can understand if thats hard to grasp, but thats how I was raised. I always shared all I had with others, maybe because my other brother (older) never wanted to share shit with me so I wanted to do it different than him.
exactly, you are a very generous person, but that is you, not some faceless bureaucrat. I do not want some government bureaucrat deciding who gets my money. So what if the person is a drug junkie or a do-nothin, they still get your money. sry, new here, no more triple posting
i have junkies as friends and also "do-nothings", have no problem with them taking my money. as I said, you dont want your money to go there, but thats because you're an egoist. if you are in such a situation you would also like someone to help you out of your drug addiction, you would like a place where you could get sober stuff instead of dirty street shit with ugly extenders in them. yes, there is like no way to prevent "do-nothings", but you have a fail rate anyway. I rather see my money go to such ppl than to some rich asses who could get even more money if they dont have to pay for such "do-nothings".
same is with that "green" shit. I dont care weather all of it is true or not, but i rather let "green" energy get my money than "noisy stinky trucks" :D
On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg USA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose.
"mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose.
also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks.
switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has?
P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh?
You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost.
The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks."
Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism.
massachusetts is not the entire USA, thats what counts. we have different "states" too with different systems to some degree but manditory insurance is all arround switzerland. as I said, USA and switzerland are systemwise very similar, the french part is way more socialistic than the german or italian part f.e. its just the absolute size that is different.
wow, the USA has something socialistic? is it good? do you layk?
but again, why is it relevant weather the country I live in is more social than your country? Yes, switzerland is very capitalisitc, so? does that change the fact that the USA is more capitalistic? does it change that both are over capitalistic?
OMG. You can't think or you can't write. I don't know which one it is. That 300 million is much much greater than 9 million doesn't compute. Nor does the concept of scalability or granularity.
But we can end the discussion here. If you didn't want to talk about it, I don't know why you ranted on and on about US "capitalism" when you don't understand the issues one bit.
On November 23 2009 10:30 Balentine wrote: the point is, most forest fires burn in the summer, but are there more of them now than there were before?
The same way there are stronger hurricanes rather than more hurricanes, there are larger forest fires rather than more forest fires. Good job proving your opposition's point.
Stronger fires aren't caused by increased temperatures, they're caused by increased fuel loads. The more you 'fight' forest fires, the more fuel builds up and the hotter they'll burn.
Most forest fires don't burn hot or long enough to destroy old growth trees, but because of a national 'save the forest' policy, the USA has a bunch of very poorly kept, very flammable forests. When they go up, and they will, the fact that small trees have been allowed to grow in to the old growth range gives the fire an elevator to reach the old growth canopy, which massively accelerates the spread and intensity of the fire, and pretty much kills all of the trees which would have otherwise survived.
There's a lot more to it than that, but whatever, small version.
On November 23 2009 11:05 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: tax rate, swiss is lower? not really if you look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg USA and switzerland is right next to each other, but in this graph the social taxes one pays every month is not taken in (~10%), these are the annual taxes. but the "general" taxes are not the biggest fuckup in switzerland its the flatrate taxes. "Unemployment insurance - US has it!" Guess what, switzerland has it too, since 1884 USA has it since 1932, sorry but you lose.
"mandatory insurance" what do you think were those 100$ I pay every month I was talking about? whole switzerland has it vs 1 state in the USA? again, you lose.
also you dont know shit about all the regulatory instances we have which makes our capitalistic system different. stuff like the LSVA which encourgaes train transportation of transit goods. thats a socialstic law that is punishing the egoistig nosy stinky trucks.
switzerland is acutally very open in terms of market and politics generally, we make business with iran and usa the same. we dance on every party, and i dont like that either, but what is the point? can you tell me the relevance that has?
P.S. im half an italian too, and a quarter norwegian, wanna rant on those systems to? wouldnt be of any relevance either, but maybe you would like, huh?
You do realize Switzerland is the size of Massachusetts right? I lose? Really please try to instituted the same system over the entire Euro zone before you claim that some how US has lost.
The US has its highway system. Public funded. Free. Socialism at work right? It's one of those socialist policies promoting your so called "nosy stinky trucks."
Whatever is rotten in the US isn't a lack of socialism.
massachusetts is not the entire USA, thats what counts. we have different "states" too with different systems to some degree but manditory insurance is all arround switzerland. as I said, USA and switzerland are systemwise very similar, the french part is way more socialistic than the german or italian part f.e. its just the absolute size that is different.
wow, the USA has something socialistic? is it good? do you layk?
but again, why is it relevant weather the country I live in is more social than your country? Yes, switzerland is very capitalisitc, so? does that change the fact that the USA is more capitalistic? does it change that both are over capitalistic?
OMG. You can't think or you can't write. I don't know which one it is. That 300 million is much much greater than 9 million doesn't compute. Nor does the concept of scalability or granularity.
But we can end the discussion here. If you didn't want to talk about it, I don't know why you ranted on and on about US "capitalism" when you don't understand the issues one bit.
I can think and I can write. Also the fact that the swiss and the US' system are very similar show that they can be compared very well, no matter if you like that or not. What you can not do, that is what YOU were doing, is compare a state (masachusetts) to a country. They have way different competencies. We have "Kantöne" as I already said, they have similar competencies than the states in the US. If I smoke weed in Zürich, I pay waaay less than in Grison (St.Moritz,Davos). The law is different between the "Kantöne" the taxes are different the schoolsystem is different. As I said, the systems are very similar.
I ranted on the capitalistic USA because its the capitalism that keeps on fucking up the environment. Money is often made on the back of the nature. Dont wanna pay for depollution? just throw it out in the forest, hey already saved some money, nice. Dont wana pay your developer for 2 years? simply take a rapidly developed system which wastes energy en masse, mooooney, ay need, nice, really. Need some different fuel? Bio fuel? No problem, just massacrate some ppl burn down the forest and plant some palm for oil or some suger pipe shit, cool capitalism fuck yeah! It's the ultimate drive for money im ranting on.
What I'm asking you for the third time now is: What the fuck does it matter where I come from when I dislike the overcapitalistic system the USA is running? why dont you rant on italy? im more italian than swiss after all.
On November 23 2009 12:03 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: I can think and I can write. Also the fact that the swiss and the US' system are very similar show that they can be compared very well, no matter if you like that or not. What you can not do, that is what YOU were doing, is compare a state (masachusetts) to a country. They have way different competencies. We have "Kantöne" as I already said, they have similar competencies than the states in the US. If I smoke weed in Zürich, I pay waaay less than in Grison (St.Moritz,Davos). The law is different between the "Kantöne" the taxes are different the schoolsystem is different. As I said, the systems are very similar.
OMG you're comparing Zurich, a city, to all of Massachusetts. It's laughable. The reasonable comparison is Boston, a city, inside Massachusetts. You think "Kantöne" are equivalent to state?? Here they would be municipal and local governments - not states. School systems, zoning, drug enforcement, that's on the municipal level.
This discussion is just ridiculous.
On November 23 2009 12:03 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: What I'm asking you for the third time now is: What the fuck does it matter where I come from when I dislike the overcapitalistic system the USA is running? why dont you rant on italy? im more italian than swiss after all.
I was just trying to make sure if you understood what you were taking about. But it is abundantly clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. I don't need need to hear you rant about anything. You provide nothing of credible substance or relevance to the discussion.
wow you question weather i know what im talking about and you say Zürich is a city? dude Zürich is only the capitol city of Zürich.
But yeah, if im so wrong with the state comparison, why dont you tell me the difference? Btw, we have municipal level of law differencies too, but they have way not as much competency as a "Kanton". please, instead of telling me what a no brainer I am make sure that you dont embarass yourself with showing me how little you know about switzerland which YOU are ranting on.
I'm a graduated Electrical Engineer, this includes classes in "energy management", it includes also energetic efficiency classes, i was also educated on toxic problems along with electronic goods. So I saw and still see how much shit is done "cheap" and energetic inefficient because its easier to make money that way. I have also graduated from an economics/information technology "middle school" (i guess thats college) so i have quite some economical background too.
but yeah, rather keep on questioning my credibility because i refuse to throw away my comparision because the USA has 300million ppl and switzerland like 8million. It doesnt matter that the system is very similar just a lot smaller, no not at all. but if you want another source that clearly lists the very similar structures of the USA and switzerland, read here http://www.amcham.ch/publications/downloads/20090226_US_USA and Switzerland_leaflet_DE.pdf its in german, but its only page 4 of 4 anyway so its not that hard for you to translate.
On November 23 2009 12:52 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: wow you question weather i know what im talking about and you say Zürich is a city? dude Zürich is only the capitol city of Zürich.
But yeah, if im so wrong with the state comparison, why dont you tell me the difference? Btw, we have municipal level of law differencies too, but they have way not as much competency as a "Kanton". please, instead of telling me what a no brainer I am make sure that you dont embarass yourself with showing me how little you know about switzerland which YOU are ranting on.
I'm a graduated Electrical Engineer, this includes classes in "energy management", it includes also energetic efficiency classes, i was also educated on toxic problems along with electronic goods. So I saw and still see how much shit is done "cheap" and energetic inefficient because its easier to make money that way. I have also graduated from an economics/information technology "middle school" (i guess thats college) so i have quite some economical background too.
but yeah, rather keep on questioning my credibility because i refuse to throw away my comparision because the USA has 300million ppl and switzerland like 8million. It doesnt matter that the system is very similar just a lot smaller, no not at all. but if you want another source that clearly lists the very similar structures of the USA and switzerland, read here http://www.amcham.ch/publications/downloads/20090226_US_USA and Switzerland_leaflet_DE.pdf its in german, but its only page 4 of 4 anyway so its not that hard for you to translate.
So anyways I translated it using a cheap translator (read, babelfish) and I came up with the following translation,
The sister republics American and the Swiss Politstrukturen • are similar itself → strong federal structures on both sides The Swiss Federal Constitution (1848) leans • to the American Federal Constitution (1787) on → clear separation from executive and legislation The two states have same moral concepts• → democracy, the freedom of the individual, Human rights and free-market economy UN of head offices in New York and Geneva• Both countries have an open society• → proportion of foreigners the USA: 14%, Switzerland: 23% Employers and innovation become in both • States capitalized → they occupy two point ranks in things global Competitive ability and innovation → they have one similarly liberal economics Legislation and engaged workers *
Which I reconstructed into this which made more sense:
American and Swiss republics are both very similar. They both have strong federal government, with both constitutions exemplifying clear separation of powers from the executive and legislative branches. They also believe in the same moral concepts, of liberty, democracy, human rights, and a free-market economy. UN head offices are in New York and Geneva. Both countries are open to foreigners, with both countries having a large number of alien residents. There are employers and innovative techniques in both, are both capitalist, and occupy similar ranks in terms of global competitive ability and innovation. They have similarly liberal economies in terms of legislation and workers that are able to work.
So you're entire argument is how the two countries are very similar. Okay. The list of similarities boils down to as follows: -separation of powers -liberty -democracy -human rights -market economy -open to immigrants -participate in the market -are both economically strong powers
Those are all bullshit similarities. I'm pretty sure most countries in Europe besides Switzerland have these characteristics, as does Canada, Japan, South Korea, and many other countries probably have these similarities nominally.
More importantly, your source is a pamphlet celebrating US-Swiss trade relations. Not exactly the most authoritative source on how similar these two countries are.
I'm interested to know what field of economics your background is in. Economics is quite a diverse field of study, especially because its more of a methodology rather than an interest in a specific kind of field. I'm assuming that as it was in what we consider to be "high school" (for the word college in French implies a high school level) which I can safely say gives very little background in what rigorous economics is. I am a second-year university student in economics, and despite really having a passion for it, studying it outside of school, etc., I can safely say that I have no idea how 99.5% of economics works. The only little bit I know is taken from the classes that I have taken, and what usually happens is I learn more and realize I know even less.
i was actually more pointing at the "federal independence" of the regions of switzerland. also the constitution which is very similar. similar liberal economic law. but yeah, i know its a gay propaganda comparison, but they point out some of the stuff i see similar and it was the best i could find quicky quick. f.e. Basel, a Kanton refused to take Guantanamo prisoners and they couldnt be forced by our federal executives to take em anyway, they are very independent just like a state in the US.
"Middle school" is not like highschool. I also was in "high school" before the middle school. My classes were business economy, like what types of companys are there what type of markets how to run a business, banking and investment. then accountancy, but only the basic stuff not to deep into interpreting business reports. political economics were much about money flow and regulatory organs (like finma which is financly watch stuff). later at university it was more about how to get your business running, how to get investors and how to manage your employees as many engineers work as managers later on. also some law classes which where close to the economy classes.
I once was very interessted in business (during middle school) watched a lot of business TV, read magazines, talked with my teacher, but the deeper i got into that the more i was disgusted by the dishonesty of this field.
On November 23 2009 13:31 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: i was actually more pointing at the "federal independence" of the regions of switzerland. also the constitution which is very similar. similar liberal economic law. but yeah, i know its a gay propaganda comparison, but they point out some of the stuff i see similar and it was the best i could find quicky quick. f.e. Basel, a Kanton refused to take Guantanamo prisoners and they couldnt be forced by our federal executives to take em anyway, they are very independent just like a state in the US.
"Middle school" is not like highschool. I also was in "high school" before the middle school. My classes were business economy, like what types of companys are there what type of markets how to run a business, banking and investment. then accountancy, but only the basic stuff not to deep into interpreting business reports. political economics were much about money flow and regulatory organs (like finma which is financly watch stuff). later at university it was more about how to get your business running, how to get investors and how to manage your employees as many engineers work as managers later on.
It seems that that's more to do with what we would call "finance" rather than "economics." While similar, they are two very distinct things in function that often unfortunately get confused. My dad actually was an electrical engineer who became a manager, and he actually did an MBA (which is based off of financial accounting). Yet even with the MBA, he still can't help me with first-year economics problems. It's simply because there's a difference in the two fields that's very easy to confuse because you often hear "economists" talking about finance.
I guess the best way to differentiate the two is that: finance is the study of running a business, whereas economics is the study of how people respond to a situation of limited resources (such as money) and changes in "costs."
While some businesses may be rather unscrupulous in their activities (the polluting factory archetype comes to mind), one cannot presume that governments would not damage the environment either. For instance, the Great Leap Forward, the industrialization plan by Mao, as well as "war communism," brought forth by Lenin, were both massive, government sponsored, environmental disasters. Economists have argued about the environment, and nobody really knows what's the right answer to deal with this factor. Some people say that by letting people "own" everything you could actually improve the environment (aka "tragedy of the commons." What some game theorists have discerned, in fact, is that regardless of whoever owns the property rights, the most effective solution to remedy pollution will always be chosen. It's not an inherent flaw of capitalism that pollution itself exists-however, it is a sort of "market failure" that some economists attempt to find means to remedy. But market failure does not need to rely on capitalism to occur-a market could be a person's own choices, or a government's choices.
ok then the political economy is the thing you would call economy and business economy is finance. yeah Business Administration wont really help you in that field.
i gotta agree with you that governments fucked up big time in environmental aspects. Its not primarly companys fucking up the nature but the egoists. A government can be very egoistic to, no question. I just see the egoism much more from companys, because all they care about is having a good business report at the end of the year. money money money, thats all they are about.
The big problem I see, is that if a person owns something (capitalistic system) he can do whatever he wants with it. If this person is about keeping the nature alive it will be all fine, but if this person is just about making money he can fuck it all up. With that extra money he made on the back of nature he can buy even more land and fuck up more and more and more. If you have "common land" everyone watches that noone is fucking it up because its everyones property. In some parts of south america such "common land" was taken away from the ppl, they were killed or expelled so oil palms could be planted and some rich ass companys could make even more money fucking up all the land (colombia that is).
In switzerland we have NGOs which regulate such companys to some degree. They can force the companys to make less parking area and better public traffic and such stuff. These NGOs are hated a lot by companys as they delay a lot of buildings which costs money and companys dont like anything that costs money.
On November 23 2009 14:08 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: ok then the political economy is the thing you would call economy and business economy is finance. yeah Business Administration wont really help you in that field.
i gotta agree with you that governments fucked up big time in environmental aspects. Its not primarly companys fucking up the nature but the egoists. A government can be very egoistic to, no question. I just see the egoism much more from companys, because all they care about is having a good business report at the end of the year. money money money, thats all they are about.
The big problem I see, is that if a person owns something (capitalistic system) he can do whatever he wants with it. If this person is about keeping the nature alive it will be all fine, but if this person is just about making money he can fuck it all up. With that extra money he made on the back of nature he can buy even more land and fuck up more and more and more. If you have "common land" everyone watches that noone is fucking it up because its everyones property. In some parts of south america such "common land" was taken away from the ppl, they were killed or expelled so oil palms could be planted and some rich ass companys could make even more money fucking up all the land (colombia that is).
In switzerland we have NGOs which regulate such companys to some degree. They can force the companys to make less parking area and better public traffic and such stuff. These NGOs are hated a lot by companys as they delay a lot of buildings which costs money and companys dont like anything that costs money.
People would not try to "fuck up" land if it doesn't provide a profit for them. Besides, consider this scenario:
Suppose Dunder Mifflin Paper Company purchases a plot of trees. They proceed to raze all the trees in order to make as much profit as they can. However, there are three effects that will hurt them by doing so:
a) Firstly, they deplete the value of their own land. If this was their main intention of purchasing all the land, then they might as well just have not bought it and put it into a bank, instead. b) Secondly, by razing all the trees, the trees will not grow back. Companies that use natural resources that are regeneratable (such as soil, trees, and whatnot) generally will not try and raze all the trees in an area. They will likely cut down something like 10% of the trees in a plot each year, as new trees that grow back will help to regenerate the cost of the investment. c) Thirdly, they earn the ire of the environmental organizations and the general public. This could lead to boycotts, which would hurt their sales.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking. More importantly, if somebody "owns" the Amazon forest, for instance, they have the power to stop people from cutting it through lawsuits.
Now the problem that is the big issue is global warming. Companies do not have strong incentives to curb pollution, because they do not feel the effects of it immediately. However, it tends to hurt everybody else. This is what we term an externality. This is where one solution is to have government or non-profits step in, as you have so explained through the NGOs. There are other, free-market solutions, but I digress, as this is one solution.
I intend on reading this myself when I get time, but I'm just going to throw this out there for those who are interested. Henry George's work Progress and Poverty is on my reading list, and from what I hear, it has many interesting ideas in it. Anyone familiar with them and care to comment on them?
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
I very well know about the three issues you explain which should a company not do it how I said they do it. But History tells us different, because if you have a forest and you raze all the trees you wont have anything anymore but you also dont invest any money in reforestation, so if it is cheaper to buy new land with good forest a capitalist will rather buy this new land and pull the same shit again than to reforest his old land (which he can sell again to a cow farmer or whatever). This is the "green liberal party" thinking, they say ecology is ok as long as you can economically profit. So they like cars who use little fuel because you save money because you need to buy less gaz.
i overflew the link you posted, as my brother (he is studying biology) told me about such stuff and i think i know what you mean. the problem i have with such papers is, that it handels us as animals. it assumes that we cannot break the primary instinct inside us. I personally think that we are on a very high intelectual level, we are able to develope ourself into a society that treats the nature well as a source of life and not as a bitch to fuck when we feel like doing so. This problem is imo not solvable with common regulatory organs such as money, punishment, access restriction but it has to be solved in a spiritual manner. Our problem is, that our development is almost only technically, socially we degenerate, we can only solve problems technically and lose spiritual tools. For example mariage (monogamy), its a spiritual tool to control sexual diseases, nowadays we solve that problem technically with condoms or the pill, but for the environmental problem, I dont see a technical solution.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
Yes, this is true, but it's not like Company A/Company C isn't being backed or supported by its own country in anyway-many times the situation is caused by the government through a company (i.e. China). In this case, the negative incentive is usually overpowered by a government powered incentive.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
So in this case, Country B is either selling the harvest rights for trees on the land or selling some other use rights to the land but not the harvest rights. In the former case, they are giving permission to cut so the fault lies with Country B, and in the latter case, they have sold partial rights to a land with no way of enforcing the limits of those partial rights. In both cases, some of the fault lies with Country B.
But the last sentence is most telling. In countries that are desperate for employers, what is the big deal if a bit of forest is cut down? Giving people gainful work to do and food to eat is far more humane than forcing them to be idle and look at a bunch of trees that they don't care for.
Environmental groups can exploit the situation by buying up property rights and then hire the locals to plant trees. A tree farm for logging or for environmental reasons will provide a sustainable source of work. It will also create a population that will actively oversee the protection of the trees.
This is a far more equitable solution than just waltzing in there and ordering the locals around as to what they should do. The clear cutting of forests in foreign countries can be decried for the environmental disaster it is, but aside from venting some anger against capitalism, there is no viable alternative being offered to the people living in those countries. We are in essence demanding favors without compensation from the poorest peoples in the world, and appealing to their sense of self-sacrifice. If we keep doing that, we are just going to be ignored.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
So in this case, Country B is either selling the harvest rights for trees on the land or selling some other use rights to the land but not the harvest rights. In the former case, they are giving permission to cut so the fault lies with Country B, and in the latter case, they have sold partial rights to a land with no way of enforcing the limits of those partial rights. In both cases, some of the fault lies with Country B.
But the last sentence is most telling. In countries that are desperate for employers, what is the big deal if a bit of forest is cut down? Giving people gainful work to do and food to eat is far more humane than forcing them to be idle and look at a bunch of trees that they don't care for.
Environmental groups can exploit the situation by buying up property rights and then hire the locals to plant trees. A tree farm for logging or for environmental reasons will provide a sustainable source of work. It will also create a population that will actively oversee the protection of the trees.
This is a far more equitable solution than just waltzing in there and ordering the locals around as to what they should do. The clear cutting of forests in foreign countries can be decried for the environmental disaster it is, but aside from venting some anger against capitalism, there is no viable alternative being offered to the people living in those countries. We are in essence demanding favors without compensation from the poorest peoples in the world, and appealing to their sense of self-sacrifice. If we keep doing that, we are just going to be ignored.
Yes, clearly an impoverished country is gaining something when its only recourse to try and feed its citizens is to doom future generations to even more abject poverty because of the self-imposed ecological impoverishment.
Clearly the fault lies with country B, and not the corporate organization for breaking the laws in the first place, for not being able to enforce its laws against transnational corporations (and their host countries) who have more assets the than country itself.
Let me point you to iceland, haiti and easter island. The fact that iceland has deserts is a direct consequence of previous deforestation. Haiti's extreme poverty is also largely a result of their extreme deforestation. The near complete extinction of the societies on easter island are also a result of complete deforestation. There have been many civilizations that have gone under because of this type of nearsighted perspective in the past.
Who cares who's 'fault' it is. The fact that substantial damage has been done and is being done is far more important than figuring out who's to 'blame'. Any of your moral suasion attempts aren't going to translate into liability anyways, so its not like they have a prophylactic quality to them.
Given the above, it strikes me as interesting that you try to apply fault, when its completely, completely irrelevant. This isn't about who's fault it is. Its about the economic incentive existing in the first place. It exists, contrary to caller's assertion that it doesn't.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
So in this case, Country B is either selling the harvest rights for trees on the land or selling some other use rights to the land but not the harvest rights. In the former case, they are giving permission to cut so the fault lies with Country B, and in the latter case, they have sold partial rights to a land with no way of enforcing the limits of those partial rights. In both cases, some of the fault lies with Country B.
But the last sentence is most telling. In countries that are desperate for employers, what is the big deal if a bit of forest is cut down? Giving people gainful work to do and food to eat is far more humane than forcing them to be idle and look at a bunch of trees that they don't care for.
Environmental groups can exploit the situation by buying up property rights and then hire the locals to plant trees. A tree farm for logging or for environmental reasons will provide a sustainable source of work. It will also create a population that will actively oversee the protection of the trees.
This is a far more equitable solution than just waltzing in there and ordering the locals around as to what they should do. The clear cutting of forests in foreign countries can be decried for the environmental disaster it is, but aside from venting some anger against capitalism, there is no viable alternative being offered to the people living in those countries. We are in essence demanding favors without compensation from the poorest peoples in the world, and appealing to their sense of self-sacrifice. If we keep doing that, we are just going to be ignored.
Yes, clearly an impoverished country is gaining something when its only recourse to try and feed its citizens is to doom future generations to even more abject poverty because of the self-imposed ecological impoverishment.
Clearly the fault lies with country B, and not the corporate organization for breaking the laws in the first place, for not being able to enforce its laws against transnational corporations (and their host countries) who have more assets the than country itself.
Let me point you to iceland, haiti and easter island. The fact that iceland has deserts is a direct consequence of previous deforestation. Haiti's extreme poverty is also largely a result of their extreme deforestation. The near complete extinction of the societies on easter island are also a result of complete deforestation. There have been many civilizations that have gone under because of this type of nearsighted perspective in the past.
Who cares who's 'fault' it is. The fact that substantial damage has been done and is being done is far more important than figuring out who's to 'blame'. Any of your moral suasion attempts aren't going to translate into liability anyways, so its not like they have a prophylactic quality to them.
Given the above, it strikes me as interesting that you try to apply fault, when its completely, completely irrelevant. This isn't about who's fault it is. Its about the economic incentive existing in the first place. It exists, contrary to caller's assertion that it doesn't.
I didn't assert that it didn't exist. Stop twisting my argument. I said that a) there are many incentives against doing so b) the fact that they do it anyways suggests that there are stronger incentives that are operating in reverse c) some may be profit but I seriously doubt that much of this "neo-imperialism" can be performed without government support of one sort or another.
radio host Alan Jones of Australia. One of the most popular news radio shows in australia.
Heres the interview with a leading scientist a person who worked for the IPCC talking about what is happening:
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.[1] He was the lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has been a critic of some global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
So in this case, Country B is either selling the harvest rights for trees on the land or selling some other use rights to the land but not the harvest rights. In the former case, they are giving permission to cut so the fault lies with Country B, and in the latter case, they have sold partial rights to a land with no way of enforcing the limits of those partial rights. In both cases, some of the fault lies with Country B.
But the last sentence is most telling. In countries that are desperate for employers, what is the big deal if a bit of forest is cut down? Giving people gainful work to do and food to eat is far more humane than forcing them to be idle and look at a bunch of trees that they don't care for.
Environmental groups can exploit the situation by buying up property rights and then hire the locals to plant trees. A tree farm for logging or for environmental reasons will provide a sustainable source of work. It will also create a population that will actively oversee the protection of the trees.
This is a far more equitable solution than just waltzing in there and ordering the locals around as to what they should do. The clear cutting of forests in foreign countries can be decried for the environmental disaster it is, but aside from venting some anger against capitalism, there is no viable alternative being offered to the people living in those countries. We are in essence demanding favors without compensation from the poorest peoples in the world, and appealing to their sense of self-sacrifice. If we keep doing that, we are just going to be ignored.
Yes, clearly an impoverished country is gaining something when its only recourse to try and feed its citizens is to doom future generations to even more abject poverty because of the self-imposed ecological impoverishment.
Clearly the fault lies with country B, and not the corporate organization for breaking the laws in the first place, for not being able to enforce its laws against transnational corporations (and their host countries) who have more assets the than country itself.
Let me point you to iceland, haiti and easter island. The fact that iceland has deserts is a direct consequence of previous deforestation. Haiti's extreme poverty is also largely a result of their extreme deforestation. The near complete extinction of the societies on easter island are also a result of complete deforestation. There have been many civilizations that have gone under because of this type of nearsighted perspective in the past.
Who cares who's 'fault' it is. The fact that substantial damage has been done and is being done is far more important than figuring out who's to 'blame'. Any of your moral suasion attempts aren't going to translate into liability anyways, so its not like they have a prophylactic quality to them.
Given the above, it strikes me as interesting that you try to apply fault, when its completely, completely irrelevant. This isn't about who's fault it is. Its about the economic incentive existing in the first place. It exists, contrary to caller's assertion that it doesn't.
I didn't assert that it didn't exist. Stop twisting my argument. I said that a) there are many incentives against doing so b) the fact that they do it anyways suggests that there are stronger incentives that are operating in reverse c) some may be profit but I seriously doubt that much of this "neo-imperialism" can be performed without government support of one sort or another.
I quoted you saying there is 'no' incentive. Not an incentive working in reverse or an overall incentive if performing under ideal conditions. Your statement was pretty clear.
There ARE many incentives against doing so, but they're rather inferior to the incentive of getting rather rich, rather quickly with very little liability attached. Commodity production in most first world nations have taken a plunge (see montana mining industry, for instance) because once the costs attached to resource extraction are fully internalized (cleanup and detox in the case of mining), most companies simply can't turn a profit. Even in cases where companies can turn a profit, they can turn larger profits by skipping out on any liabilities they have.
Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen.
On November 24 2009 02:46 L wrote: Yes, clearly an impoverished country is gaining something when its only recourse to try and feed its citizens is to doom future generations to even more abject poverty because of the self-imposed ecological impoverishment.
Clearly the fault lies with country B, and not the corporate organization for breaking the laws in the first place, for not being able to enforce its laws against transnational corporations (and their host countries) who have more assets the than country itself.
Let me point you to iceland, haiti and easter island. The fact that iceland has deserts is a direct consequence of previous deforestation. Haiti's extreme poverty is also largely a result of their extreme deforestation. The near complete extinction of the societies on easter island are also a result of complete deforestation. There have been many civilizations that have gone under because of this type of nearsighted perspective in the past.
Who cares who's 'fault' it is. The fact that substantial damage has been done and is being done is far more important than figuring out who's to 'blame'. Any of your moral suasion attempts aren't going to translate into liability anyways, so its not like they have a prophylactic quality to them.
Given the above, it strikes me as interesting that you try to apply fault, when its completely, completely irrelevant. This isn't about who's fault it is. Its about the economic incentive existing in the first place. It exists, contrary to caller's assertion that it doesn't.
To recognize a fault is not to blame. A fault means a flaw. In this case, I'm pointing out that the government is flawed in selling partial rights when it has no way of enforcing it. When assigning blame, none should go to the people of Country B, but should lay at the feet of the government officials that authorized the sale. Clearly Company A is operating immorally by not honoring its contracts with Country B.
The latter half is not an argument for deforestation or despoiling of natural resources. It is merely pointing out that approach of the environmental movement is highly flawed and unappealing because it offers the natives no viable alternate to make a living. It is not to argue that these people should cut down their trees and ignore warnings of environmentalists, but rather that environmentalists should be making the poor and undeveloped regions of the world a proposition that works on an economic level.
On November 24 2009 11:19 spets1 wrote: radio host Alan Jones of Australia. One of the most popular news radio shows in australia.
Heres the interview with a leading scientist a person who worked for the IPCC talking about what is happening:
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.[1] He was the lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has been a critic of some global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists
Alan jones is only popular with over 50's. He's your classic sensationalist and misrepresents most issues.
I'm quite sceptical of Lindzen's credentials. In terms of actual peer reviewed published material from him I was only able to find one paper he co-authored with Goody which was published in the Journal of Atmospheric sciences. Everything else I could find has just been pihilosophical rants more than anything else.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
And how many of those scientists are doctorates? How many of those have fields that are even remotely relative to climate change? How many are actually publishing still? How many scientist are there total in the world? Those are small potatoes sir.
Never trust always question, if one never does thing he will be nothing but to fool to those who do. Always get to know a process and understand anything that is presented as evidence from start to finish else you'll just be playing the fool.
Just take a look at a bunch of petition signed by only "scientist" as that is very board area and sounds so professional. For Flying Spaghetti monster, invisible pink unicorn, intelligent falling etc. etc. Just because you can come up with numbers does not put it in context.
Just because you vote on something does not make it true it's not a matter of what the group of people believe science is about facts and what is true.
On November 24 2009 11:19 spets1 wrote: radio host Alan Jones of Australia. One of the most popular news radio shows in australia.
Heres the interview with a leading scientist a person who worked for the IPCC talking about what is happening:
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.[1] He was the lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has been a critic of some global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists
Alan jones is only popular with over 50's. He's your classic sensationalist and misrepresents most issues.
I'm quite sceptical of Lindzen's credentials. In terms of actual peer reviewed published material from him I was only able to find one paper he co-authored with Goody which was published in the Journal of Atmospheric sciences. Everything else I could find has just been pihilosophical rants more than anything else.
Lindzen is basically the only climate skeptic around who has a reasonably solid record of peer-reviewed publications relating to atmosphere and climate.
On November 24 2009 11:19 spets1 wrote: radio host Alan Jones of Australia. One of the most popular news radio shows in australia.
Heres the interview with a leading scientist a person who worked for the IPCC talking about what is happening:
Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers.[1] He was the lead author of Chapter 7, 'Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,' of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change. He has been a critic of some global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists
Alan jones is only popular with over 50's. He's your classic sensationalist and misrepresents most issues.
I'm quite sceptical of Lindzen's credentials. In terms of actual peer reviewed published material from him I was only able to find one paper he co-authored with Goody which was published in the Journal of Atmospheric sciences. Everything else I could find has just been pihilosophical rants more than anything else.
Lindzen is basically the only climate skeptic around who has a reasonably solid record of peer-reviewed publications relating to atmosphere and climate.
Thanks for the link. It appears my uni's database might be a bit lacking in some respects.
Fault, as a legal term, refers to legal blameworthiness and responsibility. An entity can have a fault in the sense of a flaw, but you said someone was 'at fault', which is invokes the legal usage of the word.
I'm pointing out that the government is flawed in selling partial rights when it has no way of enforcing it.
Selling complete land rights ends in the same problem with the added problem of having no legal recourse, where selling logging rights preserves the claim. How is it a flaw to take the best out of a number of terrible choices? Isn't the 'flaw' not in the relative strength of the governments, but rather in the legal tools that allow people to evade contractual liabilities that they have entered into of their own free will?
It is merely pointing out that approach of the environmental movement is highly flawed and unappealing because it offers the natives no viable alternate to make a living.
But it does. In this instance, holding people to their commitment to not clearcut and replant saplings would be a very pro-environment move. How would sustaining the forest for future generations, and sustaining the income flow from the lumber coming out of that forest give 'the natives no viable alternate to make a living'? That's EXACTLY what it does.
In terms of your question, however, it betrays that typical 6 month outlook. A more suitable question would be: Is the society running over its carrying capacity? If so, then short term 'aid' in the form of money that substantially reduces the carrying capacity of the land that the society is on does the exact opposite of what you suggest: it will provide immediate sustenance with the inevitable side effect of abject poverty and mass emigration later: See Haiti. Aid in that respect only allows the problem to make itself worse before the symptoms reappear in a far more menacing fashion. See forest fires in the US as an example.
Compare that to post-unification japan which enacted draconian lumber control rules, sometimes at the expense of local farmers that wanted to chop wood for their own usage; Japan currently ranks highest among first world nations in terms of the proportion of land which is forested, despite being a country with extreme resource consumption and only a tiny landmass.
Proper stewardship of resources does not provide no 'viable' alternatives; it provides the best alternatives. The problem, however, is that there is a very strong tendency to maximize immediate profit over eventual profit. Its actually mandated by law in certain respects in the US, regarding the responsibility of company officers towards shareholders.
On November 24 2009 14:53 L wrote: But it does. In this instance, holding people to their commitment to not clearcut and replant saplings would be a very pro-environment move. How would sustaining the forest for future generations, and sustaining the income flow from the lumber coming out of that forest give 'the natives no viable alternate to make a living'? That's EXACTLY what it does.
SO DO IT. Better environmentalists act as responsible businessmen and stewards of natural resources than the despoilers strip out the resources and go. But that just might be an act of capitalism.
On November 24 2009 14:53 L wrote: In terms of your question, however, it betrays that typical 6 month outlook. A more suitable question would be: Is the society running over its carrying capacity? If so, then short term 'aid' in the form of money that substantially reduces the carrying capacity of the land that the society is on does the exact opposite of what you suggest: it will provide immediate sustenance with the inevitable side effect of abject poverty and mass emigration later: See Haiti. Aid in that respect only allows the problem to make itself worse before the symptoms reappear in a far more menacing fashion. See forest fires in the US as an example.
What are you going to do about it? Are you going to kill all the poor undeveloped people around the world because you think that it exceeds the carrying capacity? Is that what you want? Institute some kind of global eugenics plan?
I guess it also means you wouldn't give aid to Haiti because you think they should starve and learn their lesson? History has show that famine is a good check on population growth.
On November 24 2009 14:53 L wrote: Compare that to post-unification japan which enacted draconian lumber control rules, sometimes at the expense of local farmers that wanted to chop wood for their own usage; Japan currently ranks highest among first world nations in terms of the proportion of land which is forested, despite being a country with extreme resource consumption and only a tiny landmass.
Proper stewardship of resources does not provide no 'viable' alternatives; it provides the best alternatives. The problem, however, is that there is a very strong tendency to maximize immediate profit over eventual profit. Its actually mandated by law in certain respects in the US, regarding the responsibility of company officers towards shareholders.
In your mind you think that it's a convincing proposition, but you have to convince the people in the third world countries of that. Take it directly to the people in question and start organizing around the idea of sustainable development. This is hardly being done at all. If it's a good economic proposition go out and do it.
Instead most of the focus is on third world leadership that has a tendency to be really corrupt. These governments don't do their due diligence when signing much of their natural resource deals. In the case of the lumber companies, where there is such a risk of cutting and running, the proper terms would require a large deposit to ensure that follow-up treatment of the land is duly carried out. Why does this not happen???
Besides those possibilities, the other option is to open up a factory in some of these third world countries and draw all these people away from destroying their natural resources. The people would love you for it since factory jobs would be both easier and safer than working out in the fields or in the lumber industry. Oh wait that would be considered a sweat shop - yet another feature of capitalism.
Remember that disparaging comment aimed against the 'environmentalist movement'? They are. Checkmate. Only now the environmentalist movement now includes massive corporations, like Chevron, who've instituted probably one of the most strict ecological preservation zones around a few of their oil fields.
Are you going to kill all the poor undeveloped people around the world because you think that it exceeds the carrying capacity? Is that what you want? Institute some kind of global eugenics plan?
I don't have to do anything; If there insufficient resources to support a population, the population will die out. The story of the Anasazi is telling here: They let their population explode when decades of good weather occured, unaware that there is a roughly 40 year climatological cycle in the lands they lived on. When drought hit, as it would from time to time, the results were increasingly severe. At the end of their civilization, huge tensions between the ruling class and the peasants over insufficient food tore the society apart and now they NO LONGER EXIST.
But what happens if someone decided to ship them grain during that drought? Well, they'd soldier along and increase their population more, the wet cycle would return and everyone would be happy until the next drought cycle hits. At that point, the initial problem regarding carrying capacity is now made far worse, and many, many more people die of starvation. Many more would die in armed conflict over the meager food that remained.
Many islands in the pacific exhibited similar trends; when trading partners started folding up, a domino cascade effect occured, with many of the islands losing the majority of their population.
So which scenario is ultimately more moral?
If I would give aid to Haiti, it wouldn't be in the form of food or money, it would be in the form of productivity equipment to raise their self sufficiency (And note: that doesn't mean machinery: Machinery essentially forces the aid receiving country to pay for the expertise to repair the machines and pay for replacement parts. It produces a built-in dependency), as well as contraceptives/medical care so that families aren't forced to have 7 children because they think 3 are going to die by the age of 5. Additionally, I'd fund nurseries to begin replanting forests in Haiti, so that the periodic natural disasters which occur aren't as severe, and so that there will be a future source of lumber, wild game and windbreaks. These efforts would be incredibly helpful in revitalizing the country's economy, but the efforts would take over a decade to fully pay their dividends; time that most starving subsistence farmers simply can't wait. As with the anasazi, when food is scarce, societal unrest increases dramatically.
Additionally, eugenics? Lol, this isn't about selecting genes which are passed on to create some master race and discriminating based on that, its about keeping populations who can't provide for themselves from digging themselves deeper into trouble. Whether the incentives are economic, moral or religious, pretty much all countries have methods by which they self-regulate levels of reproduction.
In your mind you think that it's a convincing proposition, but you have to convince the people in the third world countries of that.
No, I don't. Many third world countries simply don't have the problems Haiti and its analogues have. Even in the areas in which the analysis does apply I know they won't bite, because it means sacrifices in the immediate future for long term benefit and that's always a hard sell. I'm saying its a better choice regardless of how attractive the proposition is; sometimes the right thing to do is also the hardest thing to do.
People are making inroads in their efforts to have these ideas implemented but there's substantial resistance. In some countries the rulers simply don't give a shit about anything other than staying in power and enriching themselves: See Duvalier in Haiti, for instance. In other countries there simply isn't the knowledge of these phenomena; this mode of sustainable thinking is relatively new. In other countries still, the problem is completely reversed: they have a huge amount of resources and simply can't decide on who its going to belong to: Congo. In the majority of these countries, legal systems are massively corrupt regardless, so a foreign company can evade liability with a proper bribe, or there won't be laws in place dealing with the issue at all; A lawyer I know had to write the majority of public utility regulation in an African country because they had none prior to building a massive dam that now produces 1/5th of their GDP.
Why does this not happen???
It does, but generally one of the two following scenarios play out: A) the size of the deposit would be larger than the anticipated profit from sacking the land and people wouldn't bother tendering bids to work in a backwater country when they can go to a slightly more favorable backwater country or B) the size of the deposit would be insufficient and they'd do it anyways, with any other liabilities being put on a shell company which declares bankruptcy anyways. But this isn't even a third world nation problem; its a problem in the states too. There's been a huge downswing in mining activity because of A) and many of the scenarios that end up being B) result in taxpayer financed clean-up jobs while a few directors are laughing their way to the bank.
This isn't problem of capitalism, but of corrupt rulers willing to whore themselves out to the highest bidder and exposing the rest of the population to the dire consequences of environmental destruction. That's what's been tying your scenarios together. Corruption in Haiti by Duvalier. Corruption of government in Congo. Accepting a deposit insufficient in size to cover clean-up jobs. These are all near-sighted decisions by people of power that plunders the natural resources of the country. Do pigs attract flies. Damn straight they do. Just like corrupt governments attract equally corrupt business.
And you are really fucking pessimistic. The reason you think it's the better choice is because you believe that individuals will not create innovations to solve their problems and that we will not create new social arrangement to solve our problems. It's a hard sell to the average human being because most of them are optimistic about future prospects. Sometimes the optimism fails spectacularly in mass extinction when innovations didn't pan out. Yet, more often than not innovations succeed spectacularly, and society flourish.
It's moral to allow people an opportunity with their creativity, their ability, and their hard work. It's likewise moral to balance that with prudence and wise investments. Perhaps planting tree is the best legacy a man can give to his children. Sometimes the pessimists will play the role of Cassandra, but usually they are dead wrong. These dire warning of impending doom because of overpopulation have been rained upon civilization for hundreds of years. We can probably dig up some instances from ancient Rome about there being too many human beings in the world.
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
So in this case, Country B is either selling the harvest rights for trees on the land or selling some other use rights to the land but not the harvest rights. In the former case, they are giving permission to cut so the fault lies with Country B, and in the latter case, they have sold partial rights to a land with no way of enforcing the limits of those partial rights. In both cases, some of the fault lies with Country B.
But the last sentence is most telling. In countries that are desperate for employers, what is the big deal if a bit of forest is cut down? Giving people gainful work to do and food to eat is far more humane than forcing them to be idle and look at a bunch of trees that they don't care for.
Environmental groups can exploit the situation by buying up property rights and then hire the locals to plant trees. A tree farm for logging or for environmental reasons will provide a sustainable source of work. It will also create a population that will actively oversee the protection of the trees.
This is a far more equitable solution than just waltzing in there and ordering the locals around as to what they should do. The clear cutting of forests in foreign countries can be decried for the environmental disaster it is, but aside from venting some anger against capitalism, there is no viable alternative being offered to the people living in those countries. We are in essence demanding favors without compensation from the poorest peoples in the world, and appealing to their sense of self-sacrifice. If we keep doing that, we are just going to be ignored.
Yes, clearly an impoverished country is gaining something when its only recourse to try and feed its citizens is to doom future generations to even more abject poverty because of the self-imposed ecological impoverishment.
Clearly the fault lies with country B, and not the corporate organization for breaking the laws in the first place, for not being able to enforce its laws against transnational corporations (and their host countries) who have more assets the than country itself.
Let me point you to iceland, haiti and easter island. The fact that iceland has deserts is a direct consequence of previous deforestation. Haiti's extreme poverty is also largely a result of their extreme deforestation. The near complete extinction of the societies on easter island are also a result of complete deforestation. There have been many civilizations that have gone under because of this type of nearsighted perspective in the past.
Who cares who's 'fault' it is. The fact that substantial damage has been done and is being done is far more important than figuring out who's to 'blame'. Any of your moral suasion attempts aren't going to translate into liability anyways, so its not like they have a prophylactic quality to them.
Given the above, it strikes me as interesting that you try to apply fault, when its completely, completely irrelevant. This isn't about who's fault it is. Its about the economic incentive existing in the first place. It exists, contrary to caller's assertion that it doesn't.
I didn't assert that it didn't exist. Stop twisting my argument. I said that a) there are many incentives against doing so b) the fact that they do it anyways suggests that there are stronger incentives that are operating in reverse c) some may be profit but I seriously doubt that much of this "neo-imperialism" can be performed without government support of one sort or another.
I quoted you saying there is 'no' incentive. Not an incentive working in reverse or an overall incentive if performing under ideal conditions. Your statement was pretty clear.
There ARE many incentives against doing so, but they're rather inferior to the incentive of getting rather rich, rather quickly with very little liability attached. Commodity production in most first world nations have taken a plunge (see montana mining industry, for instance) because once the costs attached to resource extraction are fully internalized (cleanup and detox in the case of mining), most companies simply can't turn a profit. Even in cases where companies can turn a profit, they can turn larger profits by skipping out on any liabilities they have.
Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen.
Um, if you completely ignore the following statement that I made, then your argument would make sense:
As you can see, there is no incentive for companies to do things like that generally speaking.
And yet, here's what generally happens. Company A will enter Country B. Company A will receive logging rights or buy up land and clear cut the area that they have been assigned despite any stipulations against doing so. Parent Company X will then buy the assets of Company A, and A will be left to undergo bankruptcy and litigation as an empty shell corporation. The directors of A will then form Company C and go to Country D and repeat the same process.
This doesn't work in the first world because governments have far more resources to track down the X-A and X-C links, but in countries that are desperate for employers to come what's the big deal if a little bit of forest is cut down.
Yes, this is true, but it's not like Company A/Company C isn't being backed or supported by its own country in anyway-many times the situation is caused by the government through a company (i.e. China). In this case, the negative incentive is usually overpowered by a government powered incentive.
Also, you forget one critical part of price equilibrium: a company doesn't need to be making a profit per-se to be doing well. A company that earns just enough to surpass all its costs (including compensation to upper level management/owners) does quite fine. You also ignore the idea of property rights: any damage that effects property that the company does not own (like for instance, most things) will force the company to take on new liability in the form of court litigation. It's not like companies will strip mine and dump shitloads of chemicals on land just because they can avoid litigation. Nearby landowners and/or the government will file shitloads of lawsuits if they try something like that, and all the "liability" that may be avoided from polluting (and causing an externality) is quickly added up. More importantly, why the hell would a company want to depreciate its own assets? Strip-mining and mass deforestation is depreciation of land, and the land is still quite a significant investment whenever they are doing anything. If it was that efficient to take all the resources as fast as they can, we should have a lot more deforestation than we currently do. Instead, we don't see that. Why? This isn't something that you can just reason out, either.
On November 22 2009 10:19 BuGzlToOnl wrote: Before the global warming fact or fiction debate thing gets rolling lets just pass this thought through our heads:
If global warming happens and we have done things against it we win.
If we do the contrary/do nothing we get fucked.
Now, if we do things to prevent global warming from happening and it turns out to be false, we still just cleaned up our messy lifestyles and made the world nicer place to live in.
i havnt read all the replies so i dont know if this post was replied to
global warming is already happening as we speak, the first signs of this are already being seen in the artic, the permafrost(permanent ice) is being melted away when these changes were predicted to happen within the next 30-40 years(this fact alone has a huge chain reaction on various different elements, one of them being that they release methane which just accelerates climate change).. the damage weve already done to the earth is insane.. i remember a scientist saying that even if there were zero carbon dioxide emissions for the next 20 years that the carbon dioxide levels within the atmosphere would still continue to rise and we would still see a global temperature increase
Um, if you completely ignore the following statement that I made, then your argument would make sense
Your following statement essentially made the incentive attributable to colluding governments, not the companies themselves. Completely wrong.
You also ignore the idea of property rights: any damage that effects property that the company does not own (like for instance, most things) will force the company to take on new liability in the form of court litigation.
No i'm not. Tort litigation is an incredibly poor method of redistributing assets; most litigants simply can't afford the costs of court in the first place, and the majority make back far less than the value they lost leading to the claim. Tort litigation's main success lies in its preventive effect, which doesn't apply in the majority of countries with corrupt and non-independent judiciaries, since those who are profiting can pay off the judges themselves. Additionally, tort law doesn't dissuade equally for all risks. For instance; Dissuading businesses against protecting against risks which are far too large for them to pay off in the first place doesn't work. In the case of mining, a mining company with assets worth, lets say, 20 million is going to be dissuaded to the tune of 20 million regarding an accident which might cost anywhere from 20 million to 500 million, because the result of any of those accidents happening is simply bankruptcy.
But why take risks that could bankrupt you? Unless you can prove a cast for lifting the corporate veil, and that's very, very difficult, recompensation becomes even harder, because the company itself is liable, not the people who have been pulling 3 million dollar a year salaries from it.
So when you say:
It's not like companies will strip mine and dump shitloads of chemicals on land just because they can avoid litigation.
I kinda roll my eyes; That's exactly what they do. In the face of increased requirements for bonds to be posted prior to extraction, most mining operations using ecologically damaging processes are simply offshored. That's why pre-dig bonds are so common in the first world, because tort law simply doesn't work in this field.
More importantly, why the hell would a company want to depreciate its own assets?
For immediate profit, obviously. If I give you a forest full of old growth trees that you can log for 60k each and make an immediate profit of, say, 100m off a plot of land, you'd probably do that and then reinvest the profits in new land. You'd be very tempted to do that if the requirement for logging properly involved a huge amount of expense. Logging, however, compared to mining, requires relatively little labour to maintain forests in a workable condition, so they've been early adopters of sustainable practices in the face of consumer and government pressure.
Logging had a very very long history of clear cutting once the mechanization of logging commenced. It was far cheaper to simply roll your choppin' machines across the forest, then toss the logs into the river and call it a day. The decline of clearcutting is due to a number of factors: Clearcutting is most economically viable in old growth forests because pretty much every tree is in that forest is big enough to be worth something. With nearly a century of clear cutting since the arrival of mechanized forestry, the amount of lumber permits that are granted on old growth forests has appreciably declined. Another reason is increased 'green' consciousness has led to a number of certifications that allow people to track lumber back to the forests they initially existed in. FSC is the leader in such standards, and these certifications play into other certifications, like LEED standards and so on. These forestry certifications were developed in the 1990s as a specific response to the type of slash and dash activities that you're pretending never happened. Its also interesting to note that silviculture and sustainable forestry practices developed very quickly in an area like tikopia, and was developed during the medieval area in Europe and during the the imperial periods during japan and china's histories; long term governance produced long term planning. Most western countries enacted strict forestry regulations during the 1900s following the rampant clear cutting prior; countries without the same degree of top-down control don't have the option.
In mining, however, there's very little ability for consumers to trace materials back to their mine of origin. I dare you to name where the metals your computer is made of come from. Its near impossible, so I don't blame you for not knowing. The mining industry is relatively shielded from consumer opinion, so it has been far harder to change. Additionally, unlike forestry where the main solution to problems is typically to just not cut an area to allow for revegitation, bedrock does not regenerate itself naturally, and water tainted by tailing runoff or leaching is immediately dangerous to surrounding communities.
On the topic of what the 'price' of the land is compared to the potential mineral wealth it holds, let me note to you that congo's mineral wealth is worth approximately 24 trillion dollars, whereas its GDP is around a hundreth of that. The relatively huge amount of cash to be made by owning land is one of the reason for the massive conflicts that exist there, and the cash from those mineral deposits is used directly to purchase weaponry to take more. The business of raping the land and waging war to find more land to rape is doing pretty well.
In the north american context, lets examine the price of continental shelves; who the fuck wants a continental shelf to call their own? No one! What happens, however, if under that continental shelf there's a few trillion gallons of oil? Suddenly everyone wants a piece! The intrinsic value of the shelf, however, is near zero. The mineral wealth beneath it is the driving factor in its price. Many areas are simply far out in the middle of nowhere with very little marketability, so the amount of investment recouped in a reclamation project would be close to nil despite huge expenses performing the reclamation itself. In terms of a raw magnitude of profit calculation, its a far better idea to rape some shit and move on to rape somewhere else than it is to tidy up after every time you stick a huge drill in the ground.
The incentives to not do so aren't as immediate, but they can pay off; Chevron, as mentioned earlier, has very fastidiously taken care of their oil fields; Why? Because they're worried governments will nationalize their assets if they don't. They also, by having a green reputation, have access to more oil fields for development because wary governments are likelier to choose them. This makes sense in the oil industry because the timeframe for extraction is very extended and the assets can be traced directly to their source. In the mining industry, not so much. Companies aren't as big, Contracts and permissions aren't as large or lucrative, and the cost of filtering and filling in mine sites is far higher than plugging a single borehole and a few steam injector sites.
This isn't problem of capitalism, but of corrupt rulers willing to whore themselves out to the highest bidder and exposing the rest of the population to the dire consequences of environmental destruction.
Not really. It has nothing to do with capitalism or rulers besides seeing how far they're willing to delay gratification. I'd argue that dynastic rulers have more incentive to take a long term view than either our 'uncorrupt' democratic forms of government in the west or our shareholder beholden public companies, but that's kinda irrelevant.
That's what's been tying your scenarios together.
No it isn't. There's nothing suggesting that the rulers of the anasazi or multiple polynesian islands were 'corrupt'. There's nothing suggesting that the death of the vikings in Greenland was more attributable to 'corrupt' leadership than their unwillingness to learn how the fuck to fish. Haiti's problems FAR predated Duvalier's government; the period in which they were doing best economically is when they were a french Caribbean colony, where they were rather spectacularly wealthy from the proceeds of plantations and agriculture. The civilization that built angkor wat failed because of water management problems. The Maya failed directly because they chopped down forests to get more arable land, but losing tree cover reduced the fertility of the soil which turned a seasonal drought into a continent wide mega drought (In the leading interpretation, at least). Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.
The reason you think it's the better choice is because you believe that individuals will not create innovations to solve their problems and that we will not create new social arrangement to solve our problems.
I'd rather bet on the safe side than wager that we will magically solve all our problems in the future without taking the proper precautions now. If I had sex with a girl in the 1800s and she protested citing the lack of safe abortions, my response would be rather unpersuasive if i said "in the next 3 months, it will come in pill form, don't worry".
These dire warning of impending doom because of overpopulation have been rained upon civilization for hundreds of years. We can probably dig up some instances from ancient Rome about there being too many human beings in the world.
Yeah, and they've caused some PRETTY SHITTY SIDE EFFECTS thoughout that time. I can point you to the subsequent enfranchisement of the peasant class in england after the black plague. I can point you to current haiti. I can point you to a fistful of examples that show that population levels are important, but you'd just wave them off as you've just done. "it doesn't matter, we've had the problem before and we're still here". Nice argument; many civilizations aren't.
Its rather simple; more people means less for everyone. If the population growth outstrips the growth in available resources, everyone will have less over time. Once that 'less' hits certain thresholds, things take rather rapid downward paths as conflict and violent spring up. The Maoris lived on a relatively tiny island with very little, resourcewise, so they continually hit that conflict point. Examine maori culture and you'll find many instances of responses to that: The cannibalism and concept of mana, the way they refer to themselves as 'people of the land', their construction of pa and so on.
This isn't a problem that hasn't been dealt with in the past; many groups have decided to limit reproduction in various manners: Look to tikopia, an incredibly tiny island that uses very strict population control to stay afloat. Seriously, look them up and see how they've reacted to this problem. The problem is very real, and the societies who haven't bothered to deal with it have all died off. We can choose our path going forward, but putting our blinders on and pretending it isn't an issue isn't going to work. Hoping to toss fuel on the fire and pretend its moral isn't a great idea either.
Oh it's the semi-apolitical tragedy of the commons argument. Just a statement of a phenomenon. Ahhh. I see. That's all it is.
Well it's a natural phenomenon for people to populate and crowd into each other. Then there might be a disastrous famine, a politically motivated war, or maybe a plague. Barring those three outcomes, the people will then discover new social patterns and create a new culture to deal with the elevated population and few years down the road, it will be like the world has always been able to cope and deal with that level of population.
So you can cherry pick the several instances when great calamity has visited the human populace. So what. That hasn't changed changed the pattern throughout history of a growing human population and improved social mechanisms for dealing with such kinds of crowding. Your examples will contribute to the available body of wisdom of the patterns of activities not to engage in. It however does not preclude the human race from trying other creative solutions to see if those will succeed.
Sometimes the speed of learning the is quite slow, so I expect humanity will endure many more painful lessons. But overall the welfare of the human race will improve.
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Over history, the plight of human being has improved with more population. It's easy to argue that given the current command of technology, social institutions, and economic institutions, there's a ceiling for how many people can be sustained on Earth. That would be correct, but the future is unknown. It's not wrong to be slightly optimistic.
The analogy to promising birth control in 3 month is patently false. There is no immediacy and there is no pre-cognition of what the true solution will be.
Instead, rather it's like a young couple expecting a child with an unsteady financial foundation. They don't know what the future will hold for them, but they know that they want to bring their child into the world anyways. It's a source of happiness, hope, perhaps it might cause a little desperation, but that's life.
You also ignore the idea of property rights: any damage that effects property that the company does not own (like for instance, most things) will force the company to take on new liability in the form of court litigation.
No i'm not. Tort litigation is an incredibly poor method of redistributing assets; most litigants simply can't afford the costs of court in the first place, and the majority make back far less than the value they lost leading to the claim. Tort litigation's main success lies in its preventive effect, which doesn't apply in the majority of countries with corrupt and non-independent judiciaries, since those who are profiting can pay off the judges themselves. Additionally, tort law doesn't dissuade equally for all risks. For instance; Dissuading businesses against protecting against risks which are far too large for them to pay off in the first place doesn't work. In the case of mining, a mining company with assets worth, lets say, 20 million is going to be dissuaded to the tune of 20 million regarding an accident which might cost anywhere from 20 million to 500 million, because the result of any of those accidents happening is simply bankruptcy.
But why take risks that could bankrupt you? Unless you can prove a cast for lifting the corporate veil, and that's very, very difficult, recompensation becomes even harder, because the company itself is liable, not the people who have been pulling 3 million dollar a year salaries from it.
It's not like companies will strip mine and dump shitloads of chemicals on land just because they can avoid litigation.
I kinda roll my eyes; That's exactly what they do. In the face of increased requirements for bonds to be posted prior to extraction, most mining operations using ecologically damaging processes are simply offshored. That's why pre-dig bonds are so common in the first world, because tort law simply doesn't work in this field.
More importantly, why the hell would a company want to depreciate its own assets?
For immediate profit, obviously. If I give you a forest full of old growth trees that you can log for 60k each and make an immediate profit of, say, 100m off a plot of land, you'd probably do that and then reinvest the profits in new land. You'd be very tempted to do that if the requirement for logging properly involved a huge amount of expense. Logging, however, compared to mining, requires relatively little labour to maintain forests in a workable condition, so they've been early adopters of sustainable practices in the face of consumer and government pressure.
Logging had a very very long history of clear cutting once the mechanization of logging commenced. It was far cheaper to simply roll your choppin' machines across the forest, then toss the logs into the river and call it a day. The decline of clearcutting is due to a number of factors: Clearcutting is most economically viable in old growth forests because pretty much every tree is in that forest is big enough to be worth something. With nearly a century of clear cutting since the arrival of mechanized forestry, the amount of lumber permits that are granted on old growth forests has appreciably declined. Another reason is increased 'green' consciousness has led to a number of certifications that allow people to track lumber back to the forests they initially existed in. FSC is the leader in such standards, and these certifications play into other certifications, like LEED standards and so on. These forestry certifications were developed in the 1990s as a specific response to the type of slash and dash activities that you're pretending never happened. Its also interesting to note that silviculture and sustainable forestry practices developed very quickly in an area like tikopia, and was developed during the medieval area in Europe and during the the imperial periods during japan and china's histories; long term governance produced long term planning. Most western countries enacted strict forestry regulations during the 1900s following the rampant clear cutting prior; countries without the same degree of top-down control don't have the option.
In mining, however, there's very little ability for consumers to trace materials back to their mine of origin. I dare you to name where the metals your computer is made of come from. Its near impossible, so I don't blame you for not knowing. The mining industry is relatively shielded from consumer opinion, so it has been far harder to change. Additionally, unlike forestry where the main solution to problems is typically to just not cut an area to allow for revegitation, bedrock does not regenerate itself naturally, and water tainted by tailing runoff or leaching is immediately dangerous to surrounding communities.
On the topic of what the 'price' of the land is compared to the potential mineral wealth it holds, let me note to you that congo's mineral wealth is worth approximately 24 trillion dollars, whereas its GDP is around a hundreth of that. The relatively huge amount of cash to be made by owning land is one of the reason for the massive conflicts that exist there, and the cash from those mineral deposits is used directly to purchase weaponry to take more. The business of raping the land and waging war to find more land to rape is doing pretty well.
In the north american context, lets examine the price of continental shelves; who the fuck wants a continental shelf to call their own? No one! What happens, however, if under that continental shelf there's a few trillion gallons of oil? Suddenly everyone wants a piece! The intrinsic value of the shelf, however, is near zero. The mineral wealth beneath it is the driving factor in its price. Many areas are simply far out in the middle of nowhere with very little marketability, so the amount of investment recouped in a reclamation project would be close to nil despite huge expenses performing the reclamation itself. In terms of a raw magnitude of profit calculation, its a far better idea to rape some shit and move on to rape somewhere else than it is to tidy up after every time you stick a huge drill in the ground.
The incentives to not do so aren't as immediate, but they can pay off; Chevron, as mentioned earlier, has very fastidiously taken care of their oil fields; Why? Because they're worried governments will nationalize their assets if they don't. They also, by having a green reputation, have access to more oil fields for development because wary governments are likelier to choose them. This makes sense in the oil industry because the timeframe for extraction is very extended and the assets can be traced directly to their source. In the mining industry, not so much. Companies aren't as big, Contracts and permissions aren't as large or lucrative, and the cost of filtering and filling in mine sites is far higher than plugging a single borehole and a few steam injector sites.
This isn't problem of capitalism, but of corrupt rulers willing to whore themselves out to the highest bidder and exposing the rest of the population to the dire consequences of environmental destruction.
Not really. It has nothing to do with capitalism or rulers besides seeing how far they're willing to delay gratification. I'd argue that dynastic rulers have more incentive to take a long term view than either our 'uncorrupt' democratic forms of government in the west or our shareholder beholden public companies, but that's kinda irrelevant.
No it isn't. There's nothing suggesting that the rulers of the anasazi or multiple polynesian islands were 'corrupt'. There's nothing suggesting that the death of the vikings in Greenland was more attributable to 'corrupt' leadership than their unwillingness to learn how the fuck to fish. Haiti's problems FAR predated Duvalier's government; the period in which they were doing best economically is when they were a french Caribbean colony, where they were rather spectacularly wealthy from the proceeds of plantations and agriculture. The civilization that built angkor wat failed because of water management problems. The Maya failed directly because they chopped down forests to get more arable land, but losing tree cover reduced the fertility of the soil which turned a seasonal drought into a continent wide mega drought (In the leading interpretation, at least). Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.
The reason you think it's the better choice is because you believe that individuals will not create innovations to solve their problems and that we will not create new social arrangement to solve our problems.
I'd rather bet on the safe side than wager that we will magically solve all our problems in the future without taking the proper precautions now. If I had sex with a girl in the 1800s and she protested citing the lack of safe abortions, my response would be rather unpersuasive if i said "in the next 3 months, it will come in pill form, don't worry".
These dire warning of impending doom because of overpopulation have been rained upon civilization for hundreds of years. We can probably dig up some instances from ancient Rome about there being too many human beings in the world.
Yeah, and they've caused some PRETTY SHITTY SIDE EFFECTS thoughout that time. I can point you to the subsequent enfranchisement of the peasant class in england after the black plague. I can point you to current haiti. I can point you to a fistful of examples that show that population levels are important, but you'd just wave them off as you've just done. "it doesn't matter, we've had the problem before and we're still here". Nice argument; many civilizations aren't.
Its rather simple; more people means less for everyone. If the population growth outstrips the growth in available resources, everyone will have less over time. Once that 'less' hits certain thresholds, things take rather rapid downward paths as conflict and violent spring up. The Maoris lived on a relatively tiny island with very little, resourcewise, so they continually hit that conflict point. Examine maori culture and you'll find many instances of responses to that: The cannibalism and concept of mana, the way they refer to themselves as 'people of the land', their construction of pa and so on.
This isn't a problem that hasn't been dealt with in the past; many groups have decided to limit reproduction in various manners: Look to tikopia, an incredibly tiny island that uses very strict population control to stay afloat. Seriously, look them up and see how they've reacted to this problem. The problem is very real, and the societies who haven't bothered to deal with it have all died off. We can choose our path going forward, but putting our blinders on and pretending it isn't an issue isn't going to work. Hoping to toss fuel on the fire and pretend its moral isn't a great idea either.
Lol dis is long.
I think we're comparing two different frameworks of argument here. My argument is based off of the idea that asymmetric information is rapidly becoming less of a limiting factor. Yours is based off of the historical idea that asymmetric information is present in market transactions. As a result, we're trying to view the same situations from two different points of view-it's obvious that our views are irreconcilable here, due purely to two different viewpoints. I am not conceding the argument here, I'm just arguing that with two completely different perspectives there's no way nobody's going to be right.
hehe Caller, I end up arguing with L all the time and it seems like so do you. But I really should be picking your brain.
Anyhow, asymmetrical information becoming less of a limiting factor... a neat idea.
In my opinion, the market has an unconscious way of distributing information. When people transact, it's because they find the deal compelling. If asymmetrical information exists then there will be an imbalance of transactions and the price will shift.
The cheaper it is for people to transact with each other, the faster asymmetrical information gets built into the price. (The market acquires the collective wisdom of its participants). By making the market global, asymmetrical information can be communicated rapidly from region to region, and it will help achieve a more equitable outcome. It's not a perfect system and there are lots of flaws, but that's the theory.
I'd like to make a point about the global warming graph that is commonly known as the Hockey Stick (phenomena?) (i'm not sure what the real name is). In the late 80's at the fall of communist Russia (and the subsequent collapse of the economy) the government had to shut down most of it's arctic weather stations. Now most of the temperatures that they were getting from these stations were sub-zero temperatures. Once these temperatures stopped getting measured and then averaged into the overall amount you have the sudden "increase" that you see in the temperature data.
If you look at the behavior of scientists, I would say that there is plenty of reason for scientists in a fringe field like climate study to collude to create hysteria about climate change. It's one of the ways for those in that field to stay socially relevant and get funding. By talking up the possible dangers of climate change, they can draw interest from those with money in the form of grants.
By confirming their initial findings and creating models that extrapolate to disaster, society will give their field more prestige and more funding and possibly economic applicability if the government around the world believe the climate change story. This pattern of exaggeration and self promotion is really ubiquitous. I wouldn't be surprised if there really was some level of academic dishonesty.
On November 25 2009 12:43 TanGeng wrote: If you look at the behavior of scientists, I would say that there is plenty of reason for scientists in a fringe field like climate study to collude to create hysteria about climate change. It's one of the ways for those in that field to stay socially relevant and get funding. By talking up the possible dangers of climate change, they can draw interest from those with money in the form of grants.
By confirming their initial findings and creating models that extrapolate to disaster, society will give their field more prestige and more funding and possibly economic applicability if the government around the world believe the climate change story. This pattern of exaggeration and self promotion is really ubiquitous. I wouldn't be surprised if there really was some level of academic dishonesty.
There are also reasons that my city officials would take bribes in exchange for political favors (more money!) and reasons why I would personally evade taxes (more money!).
These facts are not proof that my city's politicians are corrupt or that I have committed tax fraud. A plausibility argument isn't evidence of anything.
Not to mention that these scenarios are far more likely than a massive conspiracy by all climate scientists, everywhere, to fabricate studies in the hopes of more grant money.
I think we're in denial about political corruption. Especially since a lot of city officials have illegally taken bribes. Some take legal bribes in the form of campaign contributions. Others take up more circular bribes like favors to relatives and the such. Politicians are systemically susceptible to corruption because they are intimately connected to the justice system, the checks on such behavior. Tax evasion is far less likely unless they are intimately related to the tax regulators e.g. members of Senate and Timothy Geithner.
In the world of academics, with peer review journals as the "gold standard" again the players and referees are the same body of people. The system is susceptible to academic dishonesty. In a small closely knitted field like climate science, it's largely beneficial for all the scientists to collude and overstate the importance of their research. It's especially true in the 1970's when they had that Global Cooling scare. Even now there aren't many climate scientists around the world.
Corruption in our government is running rampant. Take for instance the Louisiana senator who wouldn't vote for the healthcare bill unless they put in 300 million dollars for her state. bribery. jobs created by the Stimulus Bill. In the 86 district of Florida, 5 jobs were created with 3 million dollars. and Florida only has 26 districts. this kind of stuff happens all the time. when Barack Obama was told about this he just said, "It's an imprecise science." anybody else would have been like "Whoa, I'd better investigate this. "There is pee all over the toilet seat"-"it's an imprecise science","you keep putting your vults behind your tanks"-"imprecise science" politicians sure are good at making excuses. one word, Blogoiavich (spelling is wrong) imprecise science
I think we're comparing two different frameworks of argument here.
You're talking about asymmetric information, while I'm generally focused on the foresight individual parties and their resultant interests, and how interests effect the level of foresight that parties will use. Completely different viewpoints, but there's something to gain in the exchange either way.
Its interesting how economists perceive the legal system for instance.
Sometimes the speed of learning the is quite slow, so I expect humanity will endure many more painful lessons. But overall the welfare of the human race will improve.
But here's where I need to disagree; You need to define 'welfare of the human race' very, very carefully in order to make that claim. You also need to presuppose that we have full knowledge and adaptive capability when it comes to upcoming problems, and make the additional jump that these adaptive capabilities or cultural changes will not come because of reasoning that I am presenting. If you can't do the second, then dismissal of my position is circular, because my position will become a part of the cultural adaptation which solves the problem. Whether or not the end result is one of top down control or bottom up control is irrelevant to me as long as the problem is solved.
Instead, rather it's like a young couple expecting a child with an unsteady financial foundation. They don't know what the future will hold for them, but they know that they want to bring their child into the world anyways. It's a source of happiness, hope, perhaps it might cause a little desperation, but that's life.
The problem is that it isn't a personal dilemma or a temporary hardship; its the fall of civilizations entailing the death of thousands if not millions. If one were to take your position here, morally one could not provide any aid to haiti and just say "that's life".
China's birth control measures alone, since implementation, have reduced the population of the earth by a staggering 400 million humans. Think about the effect that 'void' has on us.
And just to address this:
Over history, the plight of human being has improved with more population.
Is this a causal relationship, or has the bettering of the plight of human beings been the reason for a higher population? It seems relatively obvious amongst sociologists that the massive upspike in population during this century was caused by decreased warfare, the post WWII green revolution and massive advances in technology, not the reverse.
Additionally, the plight of humans has bettered in areas with stagnant population sizes, like tikopia or the majority of the first world, and is typically rapidly deteriorating in certain areas specifically because of higher than sustainable populations, like current day rwanda or haiti. Again, the example of post-plague europe is pretty key in demonstrating the exact opposite of your claim. What you're referring to is economic insufficiency, wherein there aren't enough people to have the society specialize enough to run a proper economy, which really doesn't apply here for a number of reasons I simply don't feel I need to get into.
Haiti could easily support its current population. There is some problems with natural resources destruction but China and its 1.3 billion in population have manage in their country. China suffered some of the worst famines and worst economic disasters in history during the Great Leap Forward. They destroyed much of the land during those decades of Mao, yet today China has even more population is an economic powerhouse. Population densities over the eastern half of China where 95% of its people live matches that of Haiti's tiny little island.
The giant difference between today's China and that of the Great Leap Forwards isn't in the fewness of the number of people. That number has instead increase. Instead it's the great advancement in social and economic institutions. The transformation hinged on two events, the death of Mao and TianAnMen Square. After TianAnMen, China's economy transformed into a free market economy. The Communist Party retreated from tight central controls into an all out defense of its political power. The roll-back of socialism and the de facto culture of private property provided for better stewardship of natural resources and of the environment.
What is necessary in Haiti isn't strictly a reduction in population, although that would help achieve more of a balance. Its current population is merely above what its social, economic, and technological institutions can support. When there is severe overcrowding with respect to what society's institutions can handle, there will be a natural pressure against population growth. Depending on how excess population taxes the society's institutions, you might see mass crime, mass poverty, racism, or organized violence (wars or de facto wars). The one possibility you mentioned was social stigma against excess reproduction, but that's provided the society hasn't succumb to these others first.
There are many traits that combine together to enable a society to handle large populations. Aversion to war is the highest. A culture that is averse to war has far more resources to allocate to feeding its people and developing medicine to ward against disease. Next in importance would be the Rule of Law and property rights. Then in about equivalent importance are geographical features like land and natural resources, social institutions like schools and local associations, technological capital like tools and equipment, and economic institutions like well operated businesses.
The difference in institutions is why South Korea easily supports its 50 million people while North Korea struggles to support its 20 million while sitting on superior natural resources.
I think we're comparing two different frameworks of argument here.
You're talking about asymmetric information, while I'm generally focused on the foresight individual parties and their resultant interests, and how interests effect the level of foresight that parties will use. Completely different viewpoints, but there's something to gain in the exchange either way.
You are terrible at discussing foresight and resultant interests. You are much too pessimistic or unimaginative. Priorities are completely out of touch, too.
Haiti could easily support its current population.
Haiti has people trying to practice subsistence agriculture on areas deemed approximately a hundredfold smaller than equivalent american sizes. Haiti also has a massive diaspora because people simply can't live at home, and a huge amount of Haiti's finances come from expatriate cash.
No, it can't support itself.
Maybe it could at one time prior to the deforestation of their half of Hispaniola, but that's rather in the past now. Soils are now heavily eroded, overfarmed and very susceptible to natural disasters because of the lack of windbreaks and natural water holding capacities that forests normally bring.
There is some problems with natural resources destruction but China and its 1.3 billion in population have manage in their country.
China has a third of the population density of haiti and has far more arable land and natural resources. Haiti, by contrast, is completely deforested and the majority of its good soils have erroded. Compare haiti to the dominican republic which shares their island.
The US, as a point of reference, has a population density of around 1/12th of haiti and 1/4th of china; the new world provided a huge pressure release to population tensions over the past 400 years. Sadly, there's no undiscovered Atlantis.
DR has 9 times Haiti's GDP, 2/3rds of their population density and hasn't deforested their side of the island.
The giant difference between today's China and that of the Great Leap Forwards isn't in the fewness of the number of people. That number has instead increase. Instead it's the great advancement in social and economic institutions. The transformation hinged on two events, the death of Mao and TianAnMen Square. After TianAnMen, China's economy transformed into a free market economy. The Communist Party retreated from tight central controls into an all out defense of its political power. The roll-back of socialism and the de facto culture of private property provided for better stewardship of natural resources and of the environment.
Basically you're saying social developments that aren't related to population growth have increased the standard of living in china, which is exactly what I said last post. My position is that once you tip OVER the carrying capacity bad thing start happening when a cyclic downturn in resource availability causes tragedies and social unrest. China itself has been proactive in this field and would have 1.7 billion citizens without their current policies. The idea is to develop sustainable positive progress instead of progress punctuated by massive tragedies.
Its current population is merely above what its social, economic, and technological institutions can support.
Err, not exactly. Their natural resources are near depleted, and without those you simply can't build 'social, economic and technological resources'. First and foremost, people need to eat.
There are many traits that combine together to enable a society to handle large populations. Aversion to war is the highest. A culture that is averse to war has far more resources to allocate to feeding its people and developing medicine to ward against disease. Next in importance would be the Rule of Law and property rights.
These aren't borne out in quite a few successful civilizations (including western civilizations), but they help depending on the context of the society themselves. The Maori, for instance, needed to engage in war or risk going far above their carrying capacity. The tikopians had no need to go to war, but never really had a system of property; their system of resource allocation basically involved talking to everyone on the island and getting consent from the vast majority of people. While that doesn't work in our social context, they're far more developed along collective lines than we are. One could say that they exemplify a 'miracle of the commons'.
What you're mentioning is our specific institutions that play large roles in our method of resource distribution; they aren't prerequisites, they're specific adaptions to problems. For instance, once the Mediterranean was 'recaptured' following the crusades, the institution of roman (now civil) law was rapidly adopted as a solution to problems arising with long distance sea trade and increased inter-city travel. Civil law didn't create the opportunity to trade and break free from subsistence farming, but it sure pushed it along its way once it started. Common law resisted the spread of roman law for a simple reason; it worked fine the way it was. The problem had already been solved so there was no need to adapt further.
You've got things completely backwards.
Then in about equivalent importance are geographical features like land and natural resources, social institutions like schools and local associations, technological capital like tools and equipment, and economic institutions like well operated businesses.
These aren't 'about equivalent'. They're causal precursors of any of your other requirements. Without arable land, societies simply won't develop. Degrading arable land by trying to overexploit it by running over carrying capacity undoes societies, and haiti is one of these. These aren't 'equally important'. The mayans had a functioning legal system as well as massive technological prowess and well developed institutions and it didn't matter because they overfarmed their land and had a huge drought and left.
You are terrible at discussing foresight and resultant interests. You are much too pessimistic or unimaginative. Priorities are completely out of touch, too.
You're terrible at discussing foresight and resultant interests too. You are much too optimistic and unbased in historic facts. Priorities are completely out of touch, too.
Lots of content in that last one.
You've ignored a massive battery of arguments against many of the propositions you've advanced as well as historical evidence of this being a recurring problem. This isn't going to provide much more in the way of enlightening discussion unless you decide to go and address our disagreement in an axiomic manner. You can't really do much else, partially because you don't seem to be familiar with any of the examples we're discussing, or the limits of the models we're discussing.
im no scientist, cant anyone explain to me what is happening here? what i understood for now, is that there is a group within the "Scientist" circle who are being exposed for over-exaggerating global warming for opportunity to make money in this up and coming green revolution, and that there is a huge agenda, and people front running to get their fingers into new "green" money. im trying too look at the higher picture, since im sure none of this disproves global warming as human derived.
On November 26 2009 06:20 uiCk wrote: im no scientist, cant anyone explain to me what is happening here? what i understood for now, is that there is a group within the "Scientist" circle who are being exposed for over-exaggerating global warming for opportunity to make money in this up and coming green revolution, and that there is a huge agenda, and people front running to get their fingers into new "green" money. im trying too look at the higher picture, since im sure none of this disproves global warming as human derived.
What happened:
A hacker broke into the University of East Anglia's computer system and retrieved the emails pertaining to it's Climate Research Unit, which releases global temperature data as well as doing many other climate-science-related things, and afterwards put many of them on the internet.
Many people who think global warming is a scam (termed "denialists" or "skeptics") jumped on this, and combed the emails for evidence of a massive scam. "Evidence" of a scam they brought out were various statements, most notably one from Trenberth saying "it's a travesty we can't account for the current lack of warming," Wigley saying "blah blah adjustments to reduce the blip," emails discussing why Climate Research is a bad journal, somebody saying "good news, <insert skeptic/denialist name here> is dead," Jones saying "please delete the emails relating to AR4" with a subject titled FOI, various emails going "McIntyre (a popular skeptic/denialist) does crap work don't give him your data" and notes and code from some guy named Harry who was working on some code that gave bad numbers.
So far the only actual evidence of wrong-doing is the email relating to email deletion, and you have tons of people are acting like it's the 2096034573th final nail in the coffin of the global warming theory, that climate science is a fundamentally corrupt field, and how since all of CRU has been discredited, the IPCC is discredited too and we have no evidence of global warming (all of which is garbage).
Haiti could easily support its current population.
Haiti has people trying to practice subsistence agriculture on areas deemed approximately a hundredfold smaller than equivalent american sizes. Haiti also has a massive diaspora because people simply can't live at home, and a huge amount of Haiti's finances come from expatriate cash.
No, it can't support itself.
Maybe it could at one time prior to the deforestation of their half of Hispaniola, but that's rather in the past now. Soils are now heavily eroded, overfarmed and very susceptible to natural disasters because of the lack of windbreaks and natural water holding capacities that forests normally bring.
There is some problems with natural resources destruction but China and its 1.3 billion in population have manage in their country.
China has a third of the population density of haiti and has far more arable land and natural resources. Haiti, by contrast, is completely deforested and the majority of its good soils have erroded. Compare haiti to the dominican republic which shares their island.
The US, as a point of reference, has a population density of around 1/12th of haiti and 1/4th of china; the new world provided a huge pressure release to population tensions over the past 400 years. Sadly, there's no undiscovered Atlantis.
DR has 9 times Haiti's GDP, 2/3rds of their population density and hasn't deforested their side of the island.
The giant difference between today's China and that of the Great Leap Forwards isn't in the fewness of the number of people. That number has instead increase. Instead it's the great advancement in social and economic institutions. The transformation hinged on two events, the death of Mao and TianAnMen Square. After TianAnMen, China's economy transformed into a free market economy. The Communist Party retreated from tight central controls into an all out defense of its political power. The roll-back of socialism and the de facto culture of private property provided for better stewardship of natural resources and of the environment.
Basically you're saying social developments that aren't related to population growth have increased the standard of living in china, which is exactly what I said last post. My position is that once you tip OVER the carrying capacity bad thing start happening when a cyclic downturn in resource availability causes tragedies and social unrest. China itself has been proactive in this field and would have 1.7 billion citizens without their current policies. The idea is to develop sustainable positive progress instead of progress punctuated by massive tragedies.
Its current population is merely above what its social, economic, and technological institutions can support.
Err, not exactly. Their natural resources are near depleted, and without those you simply can't build 'social, economic and technological resources'. First and foremost, people need to eat.
There are many traits that combine together to enable a society to handle large populations. Aversion to war is the highest. A culture that is averse to war has far more resources to allocate to feeding its people and developing medicine to ward against disease. Next in importance would be the Rule of Law and property rights.
These aren't borne out in quite a few successful civilizations (including western civilizations), but they help depending on the context of the society themselves. The Maori, for instance, needed to engage in war or risk going far above their carrying capacity. The tikopians had no need to go to war, but never really had a system of property; their system of resource allocation basically involved talking to everyone on the island and getting consent from the vast majority of people. While that doesn't work in our social context, they're far more developed along collective lines than we are. One could say that they exemplify a 'miracle of the commons'.
What you're mentioning is our specific institutions that play large roles in our method of resource distribution; they aren't prerequisites, they're specific adaptions to problems. For instance, once the Mediterranean was 'recaptured' following the crusades, the institution of roman (now civil) law was rapidly adopted as a solution to problems arising with long distance sea trade and increased inter-city travel. Civil law didn't create the opportunity to trade and break free from subsistence farming, but it sure pushed it along its way once it started. Common law resisted the spread of roman law for a simple reason; it worked fine the way it was. The problem had already been solved so there was no need to adapt further.
You've got things completely backwards.
Then in about equivalent importance are geographical features like land and natural resources, social institutions like schools and local associations, technological capital like tools and equipment, and economic institutions like well operated businesses.
These aren't 'about equivalent'. They're causal precursors of any of your other requirements. Without arable land, societies simply won't develop. Degrading arable land by trying to overexploit it by running over carrying capacity undoes societies, and haiti is one of these. These aren't 'equally important'. The mayans had a functioning legal system as well as massive technological prowess and well developed institutions and it didn't matter because they overfarmed their land and had a huge drought and left.
You are terrible at discussing foresight and resultant interests. You are much too pessimistic or unimaginative. Priorities are completely out of touch, too.
You're terrible at discussing foresight and resultant interests too. You are much too optimistic and unbased in historic facts. Priorities are completely out of touch, too.
Lots of content in that last one.
You've ignored a massive battery of arguments against many of the propositions you've advanced as well as historical evidence of this being a recurring problem. This isn't going to provide much more in the way of enlightening discussion unless you decide to go and address our disagreement in an axiomic manner. You can't really do much else, partially because you don't seem to be familiar with any of the examples we're discussing, or the limits of the models we're discussing.
Most important Aversion to War + Rule of Law. Your environmental protection technologies and social pressures are at least 50 years away for most of these places you are talking about. It's not that they eventually don't become a part of a society's institutions but they are low low on importance.
Your posts amount to "I'm smarter and more prescient than everyone else, so I fancy myself a tyrant for the world."
====
This is what pisses me off when the tragedy of commons argument is applied to disastrous human population growth. It amounts to a combination of pessimistic outlooks towards the word.
First of all, it's a pessimism in their fellow man. It's an assertion that people will never work out a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction. It's an assertion that these kinds of solutions has to be imposed upon the people by a "more intelligent" body of people. The imposition of solution by force amounts to decreeing that "the pen is not mightier than the sword" that "violence is superior to reason." Perhaps it's also a pessimism in oneself that persuasive powers are insufficient to win over peers.
Second of all, it's a pessimism in human ingenuity. It's an assertion that the same problems down the same economies of scale that currently challenge the human race will always challenge the human race for perpetuity. Humans will never find the solution.
Third of all, it's a pessimism of outcomes. Basically, the assertion is that each and every failure will be utterly disastrous to the point that we have to put all our resources into preventing such a failure even if there is only a small chance of the failure happening - Dick Cheney's "one percent doctorine" at work. Failures will never happen on a small scale and failures will never be opportunities for reconsideration and reassessment.
Oh and it's a shallow analysis of the situation, too. Every observed failure is a failure born of out the free will of humans. We are evil evil creatures. It's the universal explanation.
Whether we are the cause of Climate Change or not, we should still be looking towards renewable energy as we can't sustain on fossil fuels forever so we might as well use clean alternatives. Just because we aren't causing global warming (assuming the new evidence is legit) doesn't mean we should continue to spew out pollutants until the air we breathe is nothing but a thick smog.
On November 25 2009 12:23 Balentine wrote: I'd like to make a point about the global warming graph that is commonly known as the Hockey Stick (phenomena?) (i'm not sure what the real name is). In the late 80's at the fall of communist Russia (and the subsequent collapse of the economy) the government had to shut down most of it's arctic weather stations. Now most of the temperatures that they were getting from these stations were sub-zero temperatures. Once these temperatures stopped getting measured and then averaged into the overall amount you have the sudden "increase" that you see in the temperature data.
I laughed. Just because you can't measure an arithmetic mean doesn't mean everyone else is that stupid.
syanpse, maybe you should do your research instead of mocking people who do. don't believe me or anybody else. whenever you question somebody you should do your own research before you say anything. ever heard of Google?
I'd like to make a point about the global warming graph that is commonly known as the Hockey Stick (phenomena?) (i'm not sure what the real name is). In the late 80's at the fall of communist Russia (and the subsequent collapse of the economy) the government had to shut down most of it's arctic weather stations. Now most of the temperatures that they were getting from these stations were sub-zero temperatures. Once these temperatures stopped getting measured and then averaged into the overall amount you have the sudden "increase" that you see in the temperature data.
On November 26 2009 20:12 Balentine wrote:
syanpse, maybe you should do your research instead of mocking people who do. don't believe me or anybody else. whenever you question somebody you should do your own research before you say anything. ever heard of Google?
I laughed twice. Pure self-righteous ignorance here folks.
Most important Aversion to War + Rule of Law. Your environmental protection technologies and social pressures are at least 50 years away for most of these places you are talking about. It's not that they eventually don't become a part of a society's institutions but they are low low on importance.
Your posts amount to "I'm smarter and more prescient than everyone else, so I fancy myself a tyrant for the world."
I'm a tyrant? I haven't proposed ANY changes other than turning up social pressure against having 7 kids, not letting companies ransack countries and then leave and support aid aimed at producing sustainable recovery instead of a temporary reprieve to an otherwise worsening situation.
Way to mischaracterize, demonize, and dismiss.
First of all, it's a pessimism in their fellow man. It's an assertion that people will never work out a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction.
The first world already found a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction; inheritance laws, health care and contraceptives.
The rest of your post is a gigantic rant against an argument which was never made and a position which was never held. Maybe you should deal with the text on the page instead of turning to Alex Jones and thinking I'm part of a NWO conspiracy to kill off your children and steal your nation from you. Humans can NEVER deal with the problem? Uh, I already mentioned that the majority of successful societies DID deal with the problem. I've specifically highlighted absolutely brilliant examples of such; Tikopia is absolutely ingenious when it comes to this. Look them up.
I'm seriously in awe of how evasive you've been in attempting to respond to my points; you don't. I noticed it in previous posts too. I'd neutralize your main propositions, and you'd continue as if your conclusion still held without it without bothering to try and rebuild it. In this post: not a single point addressed. What's more? First I'm advocating eugenics. Now I'm a tyrant. None are even remotely borne out by what I've said. Even statements like "its a shallow analysis of the situation" are absolutely mindboggling; You've brought up a grand total of zero outside research, whereas I've presented a multitude of case studies over a span of millenia; if there's something shallow here, its your predisposition to ignore the argument because it presents evidence which would challenge your ideology and world view.
Well played good sir, throwing mud in a discussion between gentlemen is always a fine way to proceed towards the discovery of truths. Have at you!
Most important Aversion to War + Rule of Law. Your environmental protection technologies and social pressures are at least 50 years away for most of these places you are talking about. It's not that they eventually don't become a part of a society's institutions but they are low low on importance.
Your posts amount to "I'm smarter and more prescient than everyone else, so I fancy myself a tyrant for the world."
I'm a tyrant? I haven't proposed ANY changes other than turning up social pressure against having 7 kids, not letting companies ransack countries and then leave and support aid aimed at producing sustainable recovery instead of a temporary reprieve to an otherwise worsening situation.
First of all, it's a pessimism in their fellow man. It's an assertion that people will never work out a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction.
The first world already found a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction; inheritance laws, health care and contraceptives.
The rest of your post is a gigantic rant against an argument which was never made and a position which was never held. Maybe you should deal with the text on the page instead of turning to Alex Jones and thinking I'm part of a NWO conspiracy to kill off your children and steal your nation from you. Humans can NEVER deal with the problem? Uh, I already mentioned that the majority of successful societies DID deal with the problem. I've specifically highlighted absolutely brilliant examples of such; Tikopia is absolutely ingenious when it comes to this. Look them up.
I'm seriously in awe of how evasive you've been in attempting to respond to my points; you don't. I noticed it in previous posts too. I'd neutralize your main propositions, and you'd continue as if your conclusion still held without it without bothering to try and rebuild it. In this post: not a single point addressed. What's more? First I'm advocating eugenics. Now I'm a tyrant. None are even remotely borne out by what I've said. Even statements like "its a shallow analysis of the situation" are absolutely mindboggling; You've brought up a grand total of zero outside research, whereas I've presented a multitude of case studies over a span of millenia; if there's something shallow here, its your predisposition to ignore the argument because it presents evidence which would challenge your ideology and world view.
Well played good sir, throwing mud in a discussion between gentlemen is always a fine way to proceed towards the discovery of truths. Have at you!
Perhaps you two should propose a specific thesis to debate.
Most important Aversion to War + Rule of Law. Your environmental protection technologies and social pressures are at least 50 years away for most of these places you are talking about. It's not that they eventually don't become a part of a society's institutions but they are low low on importance.
Your posts amount to "I'm smarter and more prescient than everyone else, so I fancy myself a tyrant for the world."
I'm a tyrant? I haven't proposed ANY changes other than turning up social pressure against having 7 kids, not letting companies ransack countries and then leave and support aid aimed at producing sustainable recovery instead of a temporary reprieve to an otherwise worsening situation.
First of all, it's a pessimism in their fellow man. It's an assertion that people will never work out a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction.
The first world already found a socially supported solution to slow down reproduction; inheritance laws, health care and contraceptives.
The rest of your post is a gigantic rant against an argument which was never made and a position which was never held. Maybe you should deal with the text on the page instead of turning to Alex Jones and thinking I'm part of a NWO conspiracy to kill off your children and steal your nation from you. Humans can NEVER deal with the problem? Uh, I already mentioned that the majority of successful societies DID deal with the problem. I've specifically highlighted absolutely brilliant examples of such; Tikopia is absolutely ingenious when it comes to this. Look them up.
I'm seriously in awe of how evasive you've been in attempting to respond to my points; you don't. I noticed it in previous posts too. I'd neutralize your main propositions, and you'd continue as if your conclusion still held without it without bothering to try and rebuild it. In this post: not a single point addressed. What's more? First I'm advocating eugenics. Now I'm a tyrant. None are even remotely borne out by what I've said. Even statements like "its a shallow analysis of the situation" are absolutely mindboggling; You've brought up a grand total of zero outside research, whereas I've presented a multitude of case studies over a span of millenia; if there's something shallow here, its your predisposition to ignore the argument because it presents evidence which would challenge your ideology and world view.
Well played good sir, throwing mud in a discussion between gentlemen is always a fine way to proceed towards the discovery of truths. Have at you!
Right. Let's dig up some mud!!!
On November 24 2009 12:23 L wrote: I quoted you saying there is 'no' incentive. Not an incentive working in reverse or an overall incentive if performing under ideal conditions. Your statement was pretty clear.
There ARE many incentives against doing so, but they're rather inferior to the incentive of getting rather rich, rather quickly with very little liability attached. Commodity production in most first world nations have taken a plunge (see montana mining industry, for instance) because once the costs attached to resource extraction are fully internalized (cleanup and detox in the case of mining), most companies simply can't turn a profit. Even in cases where companies can turn a profit, they can turn larger profits by skipping out on any liabilities they have.
Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen.
Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation property rights was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen. FIFY Pollution of neighboring lands or public lands is an issue of property rights. More on this later.
On November 26 2009 02:48 L wrote:Haiti has people trying to practice subsistence agriculture on areas deemed approximately a hundredfold smaller than equivalent american sizes. Haiti also has a massive diaspora because people simply can't live at home, and a huge amount of Haiti's finances come from expatriate cash.
No, it can't support itself.
Maybe it could at one time prior to the deforestation of their half of Hispaniola, but that's rather in the past now. Soils are now heavily eroded, overfarmed and very susceptible to natural disasters because of the lack of windbreaks and natural water holding capacities that forests normally bring.
Haiti's problem isn't of population density. While for all of China is pop. density is 1/3 of Haiti, the eastern half is about 90% of Haiti in concentration and is largely self-sufficient. The China case is rather complicated so I can expound more on it necessary, but basically the idea is that China had more trouble supporting its 900 million in the 1960 than it does the 1.3 tr1illion in the present. It would tax the system, but the 1.7 trillion with one-child policy would not be a problem. The one-child policy has also produced a looming social problem of too many guys and too few girls.
Back to Haiti. Looking at Haiti, the consistent deforestation is due to charcoal producers who raid public or private lands, burn down the forest, and harvest the charcoal. This is a clear violation of property rights. They are criminals stopping them would be step one. Haitians are trying to do it to the Dominican Republic. The DR should stop them. This is not an issue of one government or another in Haiti, but a consistent lack of proper stewardship of property.
On November 25 2009 11:02 L wrote: No it isn't. There's nothing suggesting that the rulers of the anasazi or multiple polynesian islands were 'corrupt'. There's nothing suggesting that the death of the vikings in Greenland was more attributable to 'corrupt' leadership than their unwillingness to learn how the fuck to fish. Haiti's problems FAR predated Duvalier's government; the period in which they were doing best economically is when they were a french Caribbean colony, where they were rather spectacularly wealthy from the proceeds of plantations and agriculture. The civilization that built angkor wat failed because of water management problems. The Maya failed directly because they chopped down forests to get more arable land, but losing tree cover reduced the fertility of the soil which turned a seasonal drought into a continent wide mega drought (In the leading interpretation, at least). Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.
In the case of VIkings and Mayans, there was a natural shift away in climate. You're saying that they could have mitigated the consequences? The cold spell for the Vikings made Greenland largely uninhabitable. The dry spell for the Mayans created a drought all the way through Mexico and hit the southwest United Sates. It killed civilizations throughout that band. Many of them looked like they vanished just like the Mayans. Could they have predicted such shifts? What should they have done to hedge against the kinds of disasters when nature is uncooperative in a long term way?
And these are the disasters. What about smashing success? Somehow the human race has gotten to nearly 7 billion in number. What the story for the majority? (Hint: a lot of luck mixed in)
On November 25 2009 11:02 L wrote: No i'm not. Tort litigation is an incredibly poor method of redistributing assets; most litigants simply can't afford the costs of court in the first place, and the majority make back far less than the value they lost leading to the claim. Tort litigation's main success lies in its preventive effect, which doesn't apply in the majority of countries with corrupt and non-independent judiciaries, since those who are profiting can pay off the judges themselves. Additionally, tort law doesn't dissuade equally for all risks. For instance; Dissuading businesses against protecting against risks which are far too large for them to pay off in the first place doesn't work. In the case of mining, a mining company with assets worth, lets say, 20 million is going to be dissuaded to the tune of 20 million regarding an accident which might cost anywhere from 20 million to 500 million, because the result of any of those accidents happening is simply bankruptcy.
This problem right here cannot be solved by regulations, either. Regulations swing between the extreme of being too friendly to the mining company or making resource extraction prohibitive. (Mexico/US dichotomy)
The eventual solution may involve surrounding property holders forcing the mining company to take out an insurance policy with them as the benefactors against environmental disasters and the insurance company will come in an make sure that the disasters don't happen.
====
So I guess you don't have any political ambitions. You just don't care how the decision to go green gets made, only that it gets made.
Your competency is highly concentrated in how using green techniques is the proper way to use the land. I'll applaud you for that. But then you throw in how regulations are the way to go. In those statements you have given very little in terms of supporting evidence.
Frankly, I don't have any problems with going green or having proper resource management. I don't believe regulations are the proper way to go green. On top of that, they will not have the kind of foresight to predict disasters if they come and they will not have the flexibility to react to changing conditions when they do.
I've read through alot of you two's arguments, and I must say, I actually liked some of the banter. Up till the point where TanGeng clearly got irritated at the failure to drag L into a political/economic debate, while L kept on the ecological/sociological track.
Now again, in your recent post, TanGeng, you try to bring economics and politics into a thread about ecological science. It's not really a good debate like this.
On November 27 2009 04:43 Piretes wrote: I've read through alot of you two's arguments, and I must say, I actually liked some of the banter. Up till the point where TanGeng clearly got irritated at the failure to drag L into a political/economic debate, while L kept on the ecological/sociological track.
Now again, in your recent post, TanGeng, you try to bring economics and politics into a thread about ecological science. It's not really a good debate like this.
Look here. This might be the salient point. I'm arguing about decision making mechanics while L is arguing about science.
Science is largely an academic diversion. It's not socially relevant until it gets incorporated into daily decisions. I'd rather not hole up in the ivory tower
I'm not 'arguing' about science. I'm giving you past examples of present problems and you retort to 'academic' diversions like:
Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation property rights was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen. FIFY Pollution of neighboring lands or public lands is an issue of property rights. More on this later.
No, its not an issue of property rights. Its an issue of resource management in general. The law built up to deal with the issues which are occurring are reactionary responses to problems. Take something like the 'mailbox rule', or the entirety of judge made common law for that matter.
You are looking at problems and trying to say they aren't problems by invoking a rather transparent set of ideologies. Wrong. Doesn't work. The vast majority of your replies have been 'holing up' in that ivory tower when i present case study after case study. How exactly does real world get more real world than actual events?
It doesn't.
You, however, would rather argue about theories regarding who's best placed to tackle the problem. I'm not even talking about that; I'm just describing a problem. You started off by stating that there was no problem and that I was attempting to practice euthanasia against the world. Now you've shifted to a discussion regarding 'who best to deal with it' which quite frankly neither of us have the experience to talk about without being very, very 'ivory tower' in our discussion.
Your competency is highly concentrated in how using green techniques is the proper way to use the land. I'll applaud you for that. But then you throw in how regulations are the way to go. In those statements you have given very little in terms of supporting evidence.
What is my competency, exactly? Do you know what my formation is? Regardless, aren't you the one that has an issue with supporting evidence?
Additionally doesn't the grant of competency mean you've completely ceded the historical argument, and thus the entire point to me, granted that you have no supporting evidence of your own and that my argument is limited to the existence of a problem, not a method with which to solve it?
So lets go back to the important points;
In the case of VIkings and Mayans, there was a natural shift away in climate. You're saying that they could have mitigated the consequences? The cold spell for the Vikings made Greenland largely uninhabitable. The dry spell for the Mayans created a drought all the way through Mexico and hit the southwest United Sates.
In the case of both the vikings and the mayans, a number of things happened, however, looking around them, there were viable societies that survived. The inuit lived further north and fed a population 3 times the size the vikings had using an economy based on whale fishing and seal hunting. The vikings additionally failed to establish a settlement in 'vinland' or north america despite having regular trips there.
They could have mitigated the consequences? They sure could have. Others in the area did and survived just fine; they didn't and they died.
The mayans, again weren't the only civilization in the area. Pueblo culture had far more advanced water management techniques, lived in drier areas and they survived through that and many other disasters; the drought itself was massively worsened because they cleared a huge amount of forest cover away. What's more, the mayans didn't just fail as a society; they vanished. When their society collapsed no one stayed in the area because they had made it so arid and inhospitable. Typically a disaster is what tips a society over the edge; the sudden drop in available resources results in social uprisings and the disintegration of institutions, which makes things worse still.
Pueblo culture was always being beaten down by the elements, so they never really grew beyond their means. The mayans, however, were able to artificially delay any negative effects of their deforestation practices by deforesting MORE. The result of this cycle, wherein deforestation gave ground for agriculture, which supported more people, which accelerated deforestation, was unsustainable from the start. That a drought pushed them over the edge is simply the result of poor practices beforehand.
This problem right here cannot be solved by regulations, either. Regulations swing between the extreme of being too friendly to the mining company or making resource extraction prohibitive.
So? It doesnt' change the fact that there's a problem there.
Your solution, similarly, doesn't work; either the policy has premiums which are too high, or the local residents are entitled to compensation that is too low. In the case of tainted aquifer water for instance, the amount of insured might be up to tens of millions. Another issue is that of notification in mass or class actions, which is one of the costliest points of the process.
The most important element, however, for society-scale resource issues is that the problem's roots become known on a wide scale. Without an honest debate in society, no shifting of mores will occur and there will be rather little incentive for private or public actors to change their behavior.
Haiti's problem isn't of population density. While for all of China is pop. density is 1/3 of Haiti, the eastern half is about 90% of Haiti in concentration and is largely self-sufficient. The China case is rather complicated so I can expound more on it necessary, but basically the idea is that China had more trouble supporting its 900 million in the 1960 than it does the 1.3 tr1illion in the present. It would tax the system, but the 1.7 trillion with one-child policy would not be a problem. The one-child policy has also produced a looming social problem of too many guys and too few girls.
Back to Haiti. Looking at Haiti, the consistent deforestation is due to charcoal producers who raid public or private lands, burn down the forest, and harvest the charcoal. This is a clear violation of property rights. They are criminals stopping them would be step one. Haitians are trying to do it to the Dominican Republic. The DR should stop them. This is not an issue of one government or another in Haiti, but a consistent lack of proper stewardship of property.
You're comparing the relatively urban coast of china to a nearly completely rural area that relies on subsistence farming. Why wouldn't you compare the equally rural areas in west china? Oh, because if you take the population densities there, the number drops drastically and the problem makes itself obvious? China was actually one of the first large agricultural innovators because of population stresses; they developed rice/fish combination culturing, wherein the growing fish in rice paddies allows for natural fertilization and vastly increase protein yields which allowed more people to survive in a given area.
Why not compare Hong Kong specifically? Density there is around 6000 people/km^2. Could it be that trying to use a completely urban zone would be a horrendous modelling tool? Yes it would.
But on this point, there's more; There are externalities to urban areas; they draw resources in from outside regions in order to sustain themselves; if those areas of plenty didn't exist, how would cities be able to pack people into small areas?
They wouldn't.
In fact, this is where things get cute. Remember Haiti? Haiti's main source of heating fuel and fire is charcoal. The demand for charcoal largely came from Haiti's urban capital. The incentive to burn down forests across Hispaniola is fueled by the lack of resources to sustain their population in high density areas, the exact end solution that you're proposing by attempting to model them after china.
This explains why foreign resources are in such high demand; because domestic resources and land simply don't cut it.
On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote: I'm not 'arguing' about science. I'm giving you past examples of present problems and you retort to 'academic' diversions like:
Commodities prices could swing upwards if regulation property rights was uniform worldwide, but that's not going to happen. FIFY Pollution of neighboring lands or public lands is an issue of property rights. More on this later.
No, its not an issue of property rights. Its an issue of resource management in general. The law built up to deal with the issues which are occurring are reactionary responses to problems. Take something like the 'mailbox rule', or the entirety of judge made common law for that matter. You are looking at problems and trying to say they aren't problems by invoking a rather transparent set of ideologies. Wrong. Doesn't work. The vast majority of your replies have been 'holing up' in that ivory tower when i present case study after case study. How exactly does real world get more real world than actual events? It doesn't. You, however, would rather argue about theories regarding who's best placed to tackle the problem. I'm not even talking about that; I'm just describing a problem. You started off by stating that there was no problem and that I was attempting to practice euthanasia against the world. Now you've shifted to a discussion regarding 'who best to deal with it' which quite frankly neither of us have the experience to talk about without being very, very 'ivory tower' in our discussion.
Best to just ignore the rants. Please ignore mine, too.
Your competency is highly concentrated in how using green techniques is the proper way to use the land. I'll applaud you for that. But then you throw in how regulations are the way to go. In those statements you have given very little in terms of supporting evidence.
What is my competency, exactly? Do you know what my formation is? Regardless, aren't you the one that has an issue with supporting evidence?
Additionally doesn't the grant of competency mean you've completely ceded the historical argument, and thus the entire point to me, granted that you have no supporting evidence of your own and that my argument is limited to the existence of a problem, not a method with which to solve it? So lets go back to the important points;
Just the science and the technologies of resource management – that with the present technologies, they can’t support their population. Very excellent science. It states very clearly that a problem exists.
You rarely discuss how the decision to protect the environment should be made. From what I can tell you only care that the decision is made. The solutions you propose aren't appealing to the people and then you blame the people for rejecting it. Your solutions are, of course, perfect. It's the people that must be flawed.
In the case of VIkings and Mayans, there was a natural shift away in climate. You're saying that they could have mitigated the consequences? The cold spell for the Vikings made Greenland largely uninhabitable. The dry spell for the Mayans created a drought all the way through Mexico and hit the southwest United Sates.
In the case of both the vikings and the mayans, a number of things happened, however, looking around them, there were viable societies that survived. The inuit lived further north and fed a population 3 times the size the vikings had using an economy based on whale fishing and seal hunting. The vikings additionally failed to establish a settlement in 'vinland' or north america despite having regular trips there. They could have mitigated the consequences? They sure could have. Others in the area did and survived just fine; they didn't and they died.
The mayans, again weren't the only civilization in the area. Pueblo culture had far more advanced water management techniques, lived in drier areas and they survived through that and many other disasters; the drought itself was massively worsened because they cleared a huge amount of forest cover away. What's more, the mayans didn't just fail as a society; they vanished. When their society collapsed no one stayed in the area because they had made it so arid and inhospitable. Typically a disaster is what tips a society over the edge; the sudden drop in available resources results in social uprisings and the disintegration of institutions, which makes things worse still.
Pueblo culture was always being beaten down by the elements, so they never really grew beyond their means. The mayans, however, were able to artificially delay any negative effects of their deforestation practices by deforesting MORE. The result of this cycle, wherein deforestation gave ground for agriculture, which supported more people, which accelerated deforestation, was unsustainable from the start. That a drought pushed them over the edge is simply the result of poor practices beforehand.
Come on. This is selective quoting. Omitted was the question "Could they have predicted such shifts?"
There were quite a few other cultures that vanished with climate changes in 14th century. Hohokam and the Mogollon tribes in US and Mexico disappeared completely. They were dependent on several rivers for their irrigation system, and when those changed and failed, their civilization failed. Their civilization died just like the Mayans.
Rise and failure of these civilizations has a lot to do with luck. The civilizations develop specialization in certain uses of the land and placed their bets accordingly. Sometimes they make the assumption that their climate will always stay the same. It is a very silly assumption to make, but usually it works until something goes awfully wrong. Luck! From these cases, the lesson is that it is wise to hedge, but luck is involved in having the right hedges at the right time.
Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now. Mayan might still be in ruins because of their faulty agricultural methods, but the Vikings could have taken over North America if they wanted to venture so far from their homeland. This is the benefit of hindsight. Everything seems to have so much clarity.
So much obscure knowledge. As a note, I fail to see the relevance. These are all macro-level failures in response to unforeseen external changes. It has little to do with the original discussion of foreseeable macro-level failure as the result of systemic micro-level failures.
This problem right here cannot be solved by regulations, either. Regulations swing between the extreme of being too friendly to the mining company or making resource extraction prohibitive.
So? It doesnt' change the fact that there's a problem there.
Your solution, similarly, doesn't work; either the policy has premiums which are too high, or the local residents are entitled to compensation that is too low. In the case of tainted aquifer water for instance, the amount of insured might be up to tens of millions. Another issue is that of notification in mass or class actions, which is one of the costliest points of the process. The most important element, however, for society-scale resource issues is that the problem's roots become known on a wide scale. Without an honest debate in society, no shifting of mores will occur and there will be rather little incentive for private or public actors to change their behavior.
I am not for recovering damage through tort but through contractual loss claims. The solution that I posed is using insurance where landholders in the area of possible impact get the mining company in question to buy insurance for unlimited losses in cases of ecological disaster. Clearly this is not a well developed solution since it hasn’t been applied in any significant way. The arrangement would allow the risks to be diffused and the insurance companies would hold the mining companies more accountable. It is the combination of social methods, the at-risk land owners forcing the mining company to get insurance, and market methods, the application of insurance to resource extraction disasters.
I don’t understand the last statement. Those living and owning property in the at-risk region need to know the risks and get assurances from the mining operation that they are being protected. People with nothing at risk deserve the luxury to not care at all. This minimizes the diffusion of responsibility and concentrates the power in the people who should care the most.
At times your arguments on this have confused me. Do you believe it to be a problem without a solution or do you think regulations would be effective? Or is it something else?
Haiti's problem isn't of population density. While for all of China is pop. density is 1/3 of Haiti, the eastern half is about 90% of Haiti in concentration and is largely self-sufficient. The China case is rather complicated so I can expound more on it necessary, but basically the idea is that China had more trouble supporting its 900 million in the 1960 than it does the 1.3 tr1illion in the present. It would tax the system, but the 1.7 trillion with one-child policy would not be a problem. The one-child policy has also produced a looming social problem of too many guys and too few girls.
Back to Haiti. Looking at Haiti, the consistent deforestation is due to charcoal producers who raid public or private lands, burn down the forest, and harvest the charcoal. This is a clear violation of property rights. They are criminals stopping them would be step one. Haitians are trying to do it to the Dominican Republic. The DR should stop them. This is not an issue of one government or another in Haiti, but a consistent lack of proper stewardship of property.
You're comparing the relatively urban coast of china to a nearly completely rural area that relies on subsistence farming. Why wouldn't you compare the equally rural areas in west china? Oh, because if you take the population densities there, the number drops drastically and the problem makes itself obvious? China was actually one of the first large agricultural innovators because of population stresses; they developed rice/fish combination culturing, wherein the growing fish in rice paddies allows for natural fertilization and vastly increase protein yields which allowed more people to survive in a given area.
Why not compare Hong Kong specifically? Density there is around 6000 people/km^2. Could it be that trying to use a completely urban zone would be a horrendous modelling tool? Yes it would.
I guess I’ll go into depth on China now. China is populated by several distinct tribes. The dominant few live in the eastern half – approximated 45% of the country and accounts for 95% of the population. The rest of the country is populated by Uygurs in Sinjiang or Tibetans on the Tibetan Plateau. There is some trade that goes on between these regions but the regions operate like distinct economies, even more so than Haiti and Dominican Republic. In this region, arable land makes up about 10% of the country. Almost all of it is being used to grow crops. A lot of the arable land is hilly and has been ingeniously shaped by man in order to grow crops. The rest is mountains. China is extremely mountainous like Haiti.
When talking about rural regions in China, we can look at the extreme mountains where poor sustenance farmers live. We can look at the hilly regions where only select pieces of land are arable. Or we can look the inland plains and the central and coastal plains. It varies from 20 per sq km in the mountains to 200 per sq km in the hills, to 500 in the inland plains to 1000 in the central and coastal plains. All in all the population densities are comparable.
Regardless of the population density similarity, the China case is only to show that a higher population density isn’t the be all and end all of the challenges facing society. China should only be compared against itself because no other country can match the wet rice agriculture in the South, the mineral deposits in a few of the mountain regions, and the oil of the South China Sea.
The comparison is between China of 40 years ago and the China of today. China of 40 years ago had less population and engaged in reckless environmental destruction in name of creating more farm land. China of today has more people but engages in rapid urbanization and reforestation of barren mountains. The big difference in the great shift in stewardship of the environment has been de facto property rights (assurances are still somewhat weak) and a market economy. (Out of touch Mao was also no longer deciding the direction of the economy.) It’s been creating entrepreneurial leadership and a meritocracy where wiser management of resources is being rewarded more.
On November 27 2009 09:56 L wrote:
But on this point, there's more; There are externalities to urban areas; they draw resources in from outside regions in order to sustain themselves; if those areas of plenty didn't exist, how would cities be able to pack people into small areas?
They wouldn't.
In fact, this is where things get cute. Remember Haiti? Haiti's main source of heating fuel and fire is charcoal. The demand for charcoal largely claim from Haiti's urban capital. The incentive to burn down forests across Hispaniola is fueled by the lack of resources to sustain their population in high density areas, the exact end solution that you're proposing by attempting to model them after china. This explains why foreign resources are in such high demand; because domestic resources and land simply don't cut it.
Here is one of the major drivers of deforestation on Haiti. They face an energy shortage, specifically lack of indoor cooking fuel. The shortage drives the current population to despoil the forest for the charcoal they need to survive. As long as the energy shortage is not addressed, planting trees will do nothing in Haiti. They will be cut as fast as they are being planted.
This leads to the development of an ingenious technique to mitigate deforestation: http://web.mit.edu/d-lab/portfolio/charcoal_background.htm . Look at approach being taken to develop it, and how it is being hailed in the article. I doubt it alone will be sufficient, but it will do hell of a lot more good than just planting trees.
If and when they get out from their energy shortage, Haiti should look closer to home and model their economy on the Dominican Republic. Coincidentally the compass points in the same direction. The DR has a much larger share of its people in urban areas.
Just the science and the technologies of resource management – that with the present technologies, they can’t support their population. Very excellent science. It states very clearly that a problem exists.
You rarely discuss how the decision to protect the environment should be made. From what I can tell you only care that the decision is made. The solutions you propose aren't appealing to the people and then you blame the people for rejecting it. Your solutions are, of course, perfect. It's the people that must be flawed.
I blamed people? I explicitly said otherwise in multiple portions of my arguments. Moreover, you think i'm proposing solutions when you admit I've not bothered to do so.
More importantly, my competency is "the science and technologies of resource management"? No, that's the subject that i'm talking about. That you suppose that I am competent in the matter is very flattering, though.
I am not for recovering damage through tort but through contractual loss claims. The solution that I posed is using insurance where landholders in the area of possible impact get the mining company in question to buy insurance for unlimited losses in cases of ecological disaster.
1) And if.. they don't? What then? How do 'landowners' force another 'landowner' to do something with their land? The only way they can is by asking for an injunction (which they likely won't get, and which won't come in time, anyways), or they can file after the damage is done in nuisance or the tort of Rylands v Fletcher. Government intervention? That's exactly what your ideological bent is trying to get rid of. so that's out of the picture. Either way, you're going to be traipsing on someone's private property to attempt to help out the masses.
2) What's the contractual tie between the mining company and the 'landowners'? There are none. Insurance of this type involves tort claims against the mining company which are then handled by the insurance company. The only case in which this makes rational sense is if there's something akin to a contract for exploitation of the land itself written by a government or massive local landowner. Even then, all those who aren't in the contract need to file in tort.
You also need an insurance company stupid enough to try and insure a company that, by the nature of the business, is likely to fold after their mining operations are done in the first place. Good luck there.
Contracts law, in its ability to 'solve' these problems has the exact same problems tort law has, but has the added incentive of making the company far more likely to actually have one of these faults happen in the first place because of the information asymmetry between the insurance company and the mining operator.
So yeah, its not a 'well developed solution' because it doesn't work. If it worked, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
I guess I’ll go into depth on China now.
No need, I know the demographics and distributions. But if you insist on going through and then making statements like:
China should only be compared against itself because no other country can match the wet rice agriculture in the South, the mineral deposits in a few of the mountain regions, and the oil of the South China Sea.
which completely decimates your position, go ahead. You're the one that compared china to haiti to claim that population density couldn't possibly be the issue; yet you readily admit that china has very, very robust agriculture, which can support said density (despite the fact that its clearly not the same). Even then, your talk about demographics is pretty telling; where are the main population centers in china? They sure aren't in the arid deserts or the tibetan plateau. Could it be that the development of populations in these areas has typically been held back because there simply hasn't been enough arable land to support said populations? Sure, why not! Tibet has such an incredible soil scarcity that instead of burying their dead in the ground, their bodies are chopped up and minced, then rolled into bread/bone/flesh balls and left for vultures to eat. Sky burial.
But you're left at Haiti's problems all over again; The china/haiti link we have was made by you to state that Haiti is NOT overpopulated. Try to keep your comparisons for that purpose, because they were your idea, not mine. You also aren't cognizant that my suggestion is actually being effected through mass emigration in Haiti anyways and government policies in china. The only difference between the two is that now all of the host countries have to deal with the resultant fallout of Haiti's problems, whereas China's cleaned up their own mess.
You also make a few claims in there with are relatively ideological and unsupported, but that's pretty common of your posts.
Here is one of the major drivers of deforestation on Haiti. They face an energy shortage, specifically lack of indoor cooking fuel. The shortage drives the current population to despoil the forest for the charcoal they need to survive. As long as the energy shortage is not addressed, planting trees will do nothing in Haiti. They will be cut as fast as they are being planted.
Energy is a resource. You've basically restated my claims and agree with me. Well done on coming over.
There are a number of other pilot projects in the making, including the use of solar cookers to reduce the requirement of charcoal; either way, they represent an initiative to reduce the consumption of resources because the current levels found in their country are not sufficient. India's poorer areas are actually undergoing the exact same grassroots energy issues, and are responding in roughly equivalent manners; there is a project which currently leases out solar panels to power 2 light bulbs so that textile workers can sew at home into the evening, and so that kids can study after sundown.
If and when they get out from their energy shortage, Haiti should look closer to home and model their economy on the Dominican Republic.
They probably shouldn't, because the DR is doing relatively poorly, just not in comparison to the poorest country in the hemisphere.
Come on. This is selective quoting. Omitted was the question "Could they have predicted such shifts?"
There were quite a few other cultures that vanished with climate changes in 14th century. Hohokam and the Mogollon tribes in US and Mexico disappeared completely. They were dependent on several rivers for their irrigation system, and when those changed and failed, their civilization failed. Their civilization died just like the Mayans.
Rise and failure of these civilizations has a lot to do with luck. The civilizations develop specialization in certain uses of the land and placed their bets accordingly. Sometimes they make the assumption that their climate will always stay the same. It is a very silly assumption to make, but usually it works until something goes awfully wrong. Luck! From these cases, the lesson is that it is wise to hedge, but luck is involved in having the right hedges at the right time.
Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now. Mayan might still be in ruins because of their faulty agricultural methods, but the Vikings could have taken over North America if they wanted to venture so far from their homeland. This is the benefit of hindsight. Everything seems to have so much clarity.
I left this for last because I think its important to examine what this is a response to:
You claimed the real reason I was talking about resource scarcity was corruption. I said no, there's no evidence of that. You retorted, for some reason, that the vikings and mayans were undone by climate and nothing else. I said that wasn't true.
At the start of this post, you complain that I didn't address the 'prediction' of climate shifts. I did. You simply don't remember why you're arguing the point. I specifically said, in the exact same line of responses the following bit:
Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.
Next; now you're on about luck. I've already stated that an unfortunate event can tip a society that's teetering over the edge; that isn't luck. Easter island provides a pretty open and shut non-luck example; they just chopped all their trees down. The vikings set themselves up to fail in so many ways its unreal; they spent the majority of their scarce shipping space buying non-essential luxuries. they made war with both the inuit and the native americans. they refused to fish. they raised animals which were completely inappropriate for the soil conditions they had. These aren't 'luck' they were bad choices. The mayans similarly wouldn't have been wiped out by a drought if they hadn't done everything in their power to make it fatal to themselves.
Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now.
Probably not; the vikings had run out of iron for their tools and couldn't defend themselves against the inuit without them. They had also degraded the soil in the majority of their farmland because of their choice of animals. The cold wasn't a determining factor at all. The mayans would have died off regardless during the next drought, seeing as they occur on relatively regular intervals; again when the empire fell, people didn't stick around. They made the land arid.
Just the science and the technologies of resource management – that with the present technologies, they can’t support their population. Very excellent science. It states very clearly that a problem exists.
You rarely discuss how the decision to protect the environment should be made. From what I can tell you only care that the decision is made. The solutions you propose aren't appealing to the people and then you blame the people for rejecting it. Your solutions are, of course, perfect. It's the people that must be flawed.
I blamed people? I explicitly said otherwise in multiple portions of my arguments. Moreover, you think i'm proposing solutions when you admit I've not bothered to do so.
More importantly, my competency is "the science and technologies of resource management"? No, that's the subject that i'm talking about. That you suppose that I am competent in the matter is very flattering, though.
I am not for recovering damage through tort but through contractual loss claims. The solution that I posed is using insurance where landholders in the area of possible impact get the mining company in question to buy insurance for unlimited losses in cases of ecological disaster.
1) And if.. they don't? What then? How do 'landowners' force another 'landowner' to do something with their land? The only way they can is by asking for an injunction (which they likely won't get, and which won't come in time, anyways), or they can file after the damage is done in nuisance or the tort of Rylands v Fletcher. Government intervention? That's exactly what your ideological bent is trying to get rid of. so that's out of the picture. Either way, you're going to be traipsing on someone's private property to attempt to help out the masses.
2) What's the contractual tie between the mining company and the 'landowners'? There are none. Insurance of this type involves tort claims against the mining company which are then handled by the insurance company. The only case in which this makes rational sense is if there's something akin to a contract for exploitation of the land itself written by a government or massive local landowner. Even then, all those who aren't in the contract need to file in tort.
You also need an insurance company stupid enough to try and insure a company that, by the nature of the business, is likely to fold after their mining operations are done in the first place. Good luck there.
Contracts law, in its ability to 'solve' these problems has the exact same problems tort law has, but has the added incentive of making the company far more likely to actually have one of these faults happen in the first place because of the information asymmetry between the insurance company and the mining operator.
So yeah, its not a 'well developed solution' because it doesn't work. If it worked, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
China should only be compared against itself because no other country can match the wet rice agriculture in the South, the mineral deposits in a few of the mountain regions, and the oil of the South China Sea.
which completely decimates your position, go ahead. You're the one that compared china to haiti to claim that population density couldn't possibly be the issue; yet you readily admit that china has very, very robust agriculture, which can support said density (despite the fact that its clearly not the same). Even then, your talk about demographics is pretty telling; where are the main population centers in china? They sure aren't in the arid deserts or the tibetan plateau. Could it be that the development of populations in these areas has typically been held back because there simply hasn't been enough arable land to support said populations? Sure, why not! Tibet has such an incredible soil scarcity that instead of burying their dead in the ground, their bodies are chopped up and minced, then rolled into bread/bone/flesh balls and left for vultures to eat. Sky burial.
But you're left at Haiti's problems all over again; The china/haiti link we have was made by you to state that Haiti is NOT overpopulated. Try to keep your comparisons for that purpose, because they were your idea, not mine. You also aren't cognizant that my suggestion is actually being effected through mass emigration in Haiti anyways and government policies in china. The only difference between the two is that now all of the host countries have to deal with the resultant fallout of Haiti's problems, whereas China's cleaned up their own mess.
You also make a few claims in there with are relatively ideological and unsupported, but that's pretty common of your posts.
Here is one of the major drivers of deforestation on Haiti. They face an energy shortage, specifically lack of indoor cooking fuel. The shortage drives the current population to despoil the forest for the charcoal they need to survive. As long as the energy shortage is not addressed, planting trees will do nothing in Haiti. They will be cut as fast as they are being planted.
Energy is a resource. You've basically restated my claims and agree with me. Well done on coming over.
There are a number of other pilot projects in the making, including the use of solar cookers to reduce the requirement of charcoal; either way, they represent an initiative to reduce the consumption of resources because the current levels found in their country are not sufficient. India's poorer areas are actually undergoing the exact same grassroots energy issues, and are responding in roughly equivalent manners; there is a project which currently leases out solar panels to power 2 light bulbs so that textile workers can sew at home into the evening, and so that kids can study after sundown.
Come on. This is selective quoting. Omitted was the question "Could they have predicted such shifts?"
There were quite a few other cultures that vanished with climate changes in 14th century. Hohokam and the Mogollon tribes in US and Mexico disappeared completely. They were dependent on several rivers for their irrigation system, and when those changed and failed, their civilization failed. Their civilization died just like the Mayans.
Rise and failure of these civilizations has a lot to do with luck. The civilizations develop specialization in certain uses of the land and placed their bets accordingly. Sometimes they make the assumption that their climate will always stay the same. It is a very silly assumption to make, but usually it works until something goes awfully wrong. Luck! From these cases, the lesson is that it is wise to hedge, but luck is involved in having the right hedges at the right time.
Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now. Mayan might still be in ruins because of their faulty agricultural methods, but the Vikings could have taken over North America if they wanted to venture so far from their homeland. This is the benefit of hindsight. Everything seems to have so much clarity.
I left this for last because I think its important to examine what this is a response to:
You claimed the real reason I was talking about resource scarcity was corruption. I said no, there's no evidence of that. You retorted, for some reason, that the vikings and mayans were undone by climate and nothing else. I said that wasn't true.
At the start of this post, you complain that I didn't address the 'prediction' of climate shifts. I did. You simply don't remember why you're arguing the point. I specifically said, in the exact same line of responses the following bit:
Is that corruption's fault? No. Some people had poor judgement or couldn't react quickly enough to a massive problem. They either didn't have the tools, foresight or motivation to deal with something.
Next; now you're on about luck. I've already stated that an unfortunate event can tip a society that's teetering over the edge; that isn't luck. Easter island provides a pretty open and shut non-luck example; they just chopped all their trees down. The vikings set themselves up to fail in so many ways its unreal; they spent the majority of their scarce shipping space buying non-essential luxuries. they made war with both the inuit and the native americans. they refused to fish. they raised animals which were completely inappropriate for the soil conditions they had. These aren't 'luck' they were bad choices. The mayans similarly wouldn't have been wiped out by a drought if they hadn't done everything in their power to make it fatal to themselves.
Had the environment shifts headed in the opposite direction, wet spells for Mayan culture and warm spell for Vikings, we would be discussing a different history right now.
Probably not; the vikings had run out of iron for their tools and couldn't defend themselves against the inuit without them. They had also degraded the soil in the majority of their farmland because of their choice of animals. The cold wasn't a determining factor at all. The mayans would have died off regardless during the next drought, seeing as they occur on relatively regular intervals; again when the empire fell, people didn't stick around. They made the land arid.
Why bother. This is useless. You have no solution and just want to stir up some fear? If I remember correctly, this discussion started because I said that the current environmental solution has no appeal and there is no effort to make it appealing.
If there is no argument, then what is this all about? Just to show all the minutia that you know?
I won't even bother to explain why you shouldn't have talken "you're good at science" as a compliment.
TanGeng, way to give up. L has been disproving your scientific (ecological and sociological) assumptions the whole time. You have this political ideology which makes all your 'scientific facts' subjective. L isn't arguing from a political perpective, and that you are poisoning the debate with it is your fault.
There is debate possible without dragging politics into it. That's how most scientific consensus is reached, you know. Make a thread about the rights and wrongs of development economics if you really want to spout your political ideas about this issue.
I'm pretty sure that taking the time to go over my position answers all your questions.
But instead of doing that, lets simply call L a fear mongerer and hit number 3 on the "i'm losing the argument horrendously, so lets throw out an ad hominem" tally.
Btw guys, looks like your debate is over no need to restart it.
edit: the general theme I'm getting is that only the CRU has the data (which is easily corrupted and manipulated) and everyone else must assume that its correct and therefore argue with them on their terms.
I have a question. If the emails weren't released, would the admission in the story above have occurred? Namely that there hasn't been any warming since 1995, and it may have been hotter in the medieval period? I don't think so. This so called "science" is completely political.
Poll: If the emails weren't hacked, would the admissions above have occured (Vote): Yes (Vote): No
U.N. climate panel admits Dutch sea level flaw OSLO Sat Feb 13, 2010 12:09pm EST OSLO (Reuters) - The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61C1V420100213
US climate skeptics seize on blizzard Feb 11 02:57 PM US/Eastern US opponents of climate change action are seizing on a record snowfall in Washington in hopes of killing legislation to curb carbon emissions, which already faced uncertain political prospects.
Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen Ben Webster, Environment Editor Jan 30 The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece
India, China won't sign Copenhagen Accord Jan 23 The Indian and Chinese governments have had a rethink on signing the Copenhagen Accord, officials said on Saturday, and the UN has also indefinitely postponed its Jan 31 deadline for countries to accede to the document.
An Indian official said that though the government had been thinking of signing the accord because it “did not have any legal teeth and would be good diplomatically”; it felt irked because of repeated messages from both UN officials and developed countries to accede to it. http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article93870.ece?homepage=true
Calls for UN climate chief to resign Jan 24 It is time for the embattled Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). He is steadfastly refusing to go, but his position is becoming more and more untenable by the day, and the official climate science body will continue to leach credibility while he remains in charge. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100023489/pachauri-must-quit-as-head-of-official-science-panel/
Glacier alarm 'regrettable error': UN climate head Jan 23 The Indian head of the UN climate change panel defended his position yesterday even as further errors were identified in the panel's assessment of Himalayan glaciers. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999051.ece
UN abandons climate change deadline Jan 20 The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday after the United Nations waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87479ee2-0600-11df-8c97-00144feabdc0.html
Senate not seen passing climate bill in 2010 Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:22pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate is unlikely to pass climate change legislation this year after going through the contentious health care debate, and will focus on a separate energy bill that has more bipartisan support, a key Democratic senator said on Tuesday. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60I3NA20100119?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Climate talks deadlocked as clashes erupt outside Dec 16 2009 COPENHAGEN (AP) - Danish police fired pepper spray and beat protesters with batons outside the U.N. climate conference on Wednesday, as disputes inside left major issues unresolved just two days before world leaders hope to sign a historic agreement to fight global warming.
With the talks clearly deadlocked, Connie Hedegaard, former Danish climate minister, resigned from the conference presidency to allow her boss, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen to preside as world leaders from 115 nations streamed into Copenhagen. She was to continue overseeing the closed-door negotiations. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091216/D9CKDRM00.html
Developing countries boycott UN climate talks Dec 14 COPENHAGEN (AP) - China, India and other developing nations boycotted U.N. climate talks on Monday, bringing negotiations to a halt with their demand that rich countries discuss much deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.
Representatives from developing countries - a bloc of 135 nations - said they refused to participate in any formal working groups at the 192-nation summit until the issue was resolved. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091214/D9CJ48I00.html
UK University to probe integrity of climate data Dec 3 2009 LONDON (AP) - A British university said Thursday it would investigate whether scientists at its prestigious Climatic Research Unit fudged data on global warming. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9CBVM701&show_article=1
Researcher: NASA hiding climate data Dec 3 2009 The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/researcher-says-nasa-hiding-climate-data/
On February 16 2010 18:02 fight_or_flight wrote: A lot of stuff has happened since those emails were released.
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
You are wrong, there has been no change of temperature because of the El nino that was warming the globe in mid 90-is and La nina that was cooling the globe for the mid 00-is. The fact that the temperature was essentially the same a sign for that the temperature is rising since, el nino and la nina cycles are supposed to give warmth and cooling periods.
After this you cite a lot of newspapers etc, that has NO merit in a science debate.
edit: unknown scientist that says they have changed their mind, thank god for peer review so what someone thinks doesn't really matter unless they can prove it...
Not citing the sources for that claim doesn't help you in this case.
On February 16 2010 18:02 fight_or_flight wrote: A lot of stuff has happened since those emails were released.
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
You are wrong, there has been no change of temperature because of the El nino that was warming the globe in mid 90-is and La nina that was cooling the globe for the mid 00-is. The fact that the temperature was essentially the same a sign for that the temperature is rising since, el nino and la nina cycles are supposed to give warmth and cooling periods.
After this you cite a lot of newspapers etc, that has NO merit in a science debate.
Those cycles alternate every couple of years, they aren't 15 year trends.
Also, what about the possibility that global temperature where warmer in the medieval period? I think that is pretty new as well.
And the guy isn't an unknown scientist, he is like one of the couple key guys.
Also these articles are just showing whats been happening for the last couple months, including a number of incidences which hurt the credibility of the "science".
On February 16 2010 18:02 fight_or_flight wrote: A lot of stuff has happened since those emails were released.
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
You are wrong, there has been no change of temperature because of the El nino that was warming the globe in mid 90-is and La nina that was cooling the globe for the mid 00-is. The fact that the temperature was essentially the same a sign for that the temperature is rising since, el nino and la nina cycles are supposed to give warmth and cooling periods.
After this you cite a lot of newspapers etc, that has NO merit in a science debate.
Those cycles alternate every couple of years, they aren't 15 year trends.
I'm not necessarily here for a huge debate, the purpose of my post is to generally show that there have been some key falsifications and exaggerations that have come to light, and one must wonder how widespread it truly is.
I have some problem with "facts" from newspapers since they often lack the proper education, therefore I prefer peer reviewed sources. I'm sorry but the fact says there is no significant mediviel warmth period. I will do some more research after class.
The facts don't say anything yet on the medieval warming period. It's all reconstruction, anecdotes, and theory.
At this point, the "science" is all noise and very little truth. When the science actually settle i.e. waiting another 30 years for evidence, it would be useful as actionable theories and truths. The problem is that people are screaming in their echo chambers to act immediately.
BTW The medieval warm period is an old idea. The roman warm period is also an old idea. It's built from the historical anecdotal evidence and some early proxies around the world. The lack of the medieval warm period is a new idea introduced as recently as 10 years ago by Mann featuring a hockey stick and a remarkably stable climate system up until the most recent century.
On February 17 2010 00:39 TanGeng wrote: The facts don't say anything yet on the medieval warming period. It's all reconstruction, anecdotes, and theory.
At this point, the "science" is all noise and very little truth. When the science actually settle i.e. waiting another 30 years for evidence, it would be useful as actionable theories and truths. The problem is that people are screaming in their echo chambers to act immediately.
BTW The medieval warm period is an old idea. The roman warm period is also an old idea. It's built from the historical anecdotal evidence and some early proxies around the world. The lack of the medieval warm period is a new idea introduced as recently as 10 years ago by Mann featuring a hockey stick and a remarkably stable climate system up until the most recent century.
It's fact that Greenland used to be green at one point and vikings were growing wheat there.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: What is a scary thought is that it took something as radical as this for it to make news. What modern news sells is fear and sensationalism. Al Gore's presentation on climate change brought to light a lot of the issues, and propagated fear...so the media picked up on it. In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
Well since the media isn't a global united organisation i don't think it "thinks" anything so to say. It's more like people generally thought the climatechange where controversial (interresting news). And now when climatechange is all we hear everyday, the idea that it is fake/not accurate enough suddenly is interresting again (= good news).
Also, regardless on how much burning fossils really affect global warming and if the temprature really is rising, the fact that a huge part of icecaps all over the world are melting and that the permafrost is suddenly dissapearing is a real problem. And we know that it will mess up the planet regardless if it depends on global warming or not.
So we can't just sit and do nothing regardless of the credibility of globalwarming
Pretty hilarious all these ignorant folk think they know something about global warming that thousands of climate related scientists and every major, credible organization believes doesn't.
On February 17 2010 00:39 TanGeng wrote: The facts don't say anything yet on the medieval warming period. It's all reconstruction, anecdotes, and theory.
At this point, the "science" is all noise and very little truth. When the science actually settle i.e. waiting another 30 years for evidence, it would be useful as actionable theories and truths. The problem is that people are screaming in their echo chambers to act immediately.
BTW The medieval warm period is an old idea. The roman warm period is also an old idea. It's built from the historical anecdotal evidence and some early proxies around the world. The lack of the medieval warm period is a new idea introduced as recently as 10 years ago by Mann featuring a hockey stick and a remarkably stable climate system up until the most recent century.
It's fact that Greenland used to be green at one point and vikings were growing wheat there.
Do you have a source on that? I seem to recall being taught that the Viking that originally discovered Greenland attempted to CALL the country Greenland just to pursuade his family to move from Iceland to Greenland with him
On February 17 2010 00:39 TanGeng wrote: The facts don't say anything yet on the medieval warming period. It's all reconstruction, anecdotes, and theory.
At this point, the "science" is all noise and very little truth. When the science actually settle i.e. waiting another 30 years for evidence, it would be useful as actionable theories and truths. The problem is that people are screaming in their echo chambers to act immediately.
BTW The medieval warm period is an old idea. The roman warm period is also an old idea. It's built from the historical anecdotal evidence and some early proxies around the world. The lack of the medieval warm period is a new idea introduced as recently as 10 years ago by Mann featuring a hockey stick and a remarkably stable climate system up until the most recent century.
It's fact that Greenland used to be green at one point and vikings were growing wheat there.
Do you have a source on that? I seem to recall being taught that the Viking that originally discovered Greenland attempted to CALL the country Greenland just to pursuade his family to move from Iceland to Greenland with him
Erik (who had given the island its attractive name, the better to lure settlers there)
While the name was a bit of salesmanship, it wasn't like they were aiming to survive on bare ice. Once the land stopped being farmable they left, rather than live like their Inuit neighbors.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
On November 23 2009 00:56 Biff The Understudy wrote: It's amazing how you guys see the "governement" as the ultimate evil, are so obsessed by the State taking control when basically all your economy, all your medias, all your cultural life is controlled by big companies which structurally don't obey any other law than making as much money as quickly as possible for their shareholders, which represents the 1% richest part of your population.
When you knnow the incredible amount of lobbying that theses companies are doing, chose who you should fear the most: your governement or your capitalist amoral system.
Global warming doesn't benefit anybdoy. Not doing anything and denying it benefits all major companies.
I'm sorry, but American's view on politic is so naive.
I gotta say this is, ironically, one of the most naive posts written (nice try though, guy). A quick survey of history shows that a huge majority of problems with human society are results of the state not multinational corporations. Up to and including the 20th century, where governments get in bed with said multinational corps (how are you so incredibly naive as to believe that govt and business are at odds? lol). Also you may want to check the track record of heavily statist nations in the past 100 years. Not very good, in fact, its spectacularly bad.
On February 17 2010 01:20 0neder wrote: The sun is by far the largest influencer of global temperature.
Also, there is a natural conflict of interest for researchers who want more funding and need to be seen as important.
This is probably the most annoyingly oft-repeated comments that is completely wrong. You obviously do not work in science because you don't understand how it works at all. Scientists don't get funding for figuring out something that has already been figured out, they get funding for stuff that people want to know about that hasn't been discovered yet. If they really wanted to continue getting funding they would be saying that we don't know enough about the climate and they need more funding to get a good result.
So how come scientists don't constantly act like they don't know whats going on to get funding? Because science doesn't work like that. If two scientists made a conspiracy to act together and doctor their data to make it seem like they need more funding to get at whats going on they could get a little more funding, but if one of them proves the other scientists research is total shit he gets to take all of the other scientists funding. Basically the competition in science makes it so your retarded conspiracy theory doesn't work.
EDIT: I misread your statement so it doesn't exactly apply to you, but rather all those people who say that scientists are fearmongering to get more money. Politicians may fearmonger for money, "green" tech people can fearmonger for money, but science doesn't work that way.
this new bit of leak is only a recurrence of it already happening. the UN, gore, have already been well documented and proven to hide, alter, spin, and falsify critical info. this incident can be a new spike that opens it further, but it's really not likely to get big, since the AP is not likely to make this a big issue. very selective, very controlled.
nwo this new bit can should be discussed in and of itself, as the OP is desiring it to be. but it can also not be completely separated from the big picture and the question: "is global warming real?" i will note that in this regard, getting admissions or confessions from perpetrators is only one way of going about an investigation/building a case. If u can get other instances of the same thing, if you can empirically disprove it, it's even stronger. (sometimes there is no way to prove or disprove things empirically, in which case u gotta rely on confessions and testimonies, but with global warming, this is fortunately not so!)
For anyone interested in the global warming debate in general, this video is a rich addition to your body of info.
This new incident is additional info on the "case" and should definitely not be dismissed or marginalized. however, to go about speculating on this piece alone, is kind of a dead end. look to the science, and add this to the entire body of similar falsification incidents and put it all together for the big picture.
microscopes are necessary but u cannot accomplish much if u refuse to back out from the microscope either. but of course there is a time to zoom in, and this can be one of them. but u always need to relate it back to the other body of evidence.
Global Warming: Russian analysts accuse Britain's Meteorological Office of cherry-picking Russian temperature data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures. Is Copenhagen rooted in a single tree in Siberia?
Michael Mann, a Penn State meteorologist, wrote in Friday's Washington Post that "stolen" e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit still don't alter the evidence for climate change.
Mann, a creator of the discredited hockey-stick graph used in reports from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show man-made warming, attacks climate skeptics, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, saying they "confuse the public."
Chutzpah has been redefined.
As Ronald Reagan used to say, facts are stubborn things. The fact is that imminent man-made climate disaster has been shown to be a massive fraud driven by manipulated data and deliberate suppression of facts to the contrary.
The latest Climate-gate shoe to drop is the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) accusation that the Hadley Center of Britain's Meteorological Office deliberately relied on a carefully selected 25% of Russia's weather stations that fit its theory of global warming.
By ignoring those that don't, the Russians say, the CRU overestimated warming in the country by more than half a degree Celsius.
Russia accounts for 12.5% of the earth's land mass and has weather stations throughout, so ignoring vast swaths of it can greatly skew any analysis. The IEA says CRU ignored data covering 40% of Russia, preferring data from urban centers and data that showed a warming trend. On the final page of the IEA report is a chart that shows the CRU's selective use of Russian data produced 0.64C more warming than using all the data would have done.
Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit reports that the CRU has long been suspected of misusing Russian data. He notes a March 2004 e-mail from CRU director Phil Jones to Mann that says: "Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears (in these journals) I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL." (JGR and GRL are scientific journals).
Siberia has played a pivotal role in this outright fraud. In 1995, a paper by the CRU's Keith Briffa asserted the medieval warm period was actually really cold, and recent warming is unusually warm. It relied on tree ring data from trees on Siberia's Yamal Peninsula.
On February 17 2010 01:37 Sandrosuperstar wrote: Well since the media isn't a global united organisation i don't think it "thinks" anything so to say.
The problem is that the majority of media figureheads take the attitude that the media has a responsibility to convince the public of "the truth." I'm not just talking in terms of environmental themes of this thread, but in terms of general political ideology. That isn't journalism. This is not a reporting of the facts. It's more like religion except without ever mentioning god.
The media might not "think" anything, as you say, but because media figureheads all take this attitude, mainstream fashions in ideology develop whenever enough of them spout the same opinions. A journalist cannot be trusted to have the integrity to tell you the facts; only their opinions.
This is not freedom of thought. It is just yet more proof that humans, as social creatures, are slaves to fashion and therefore the collective IQ of any population is inversely proportional to its size.
The thing that bothers me the most about this e-mail scandal is that there has not been any kind of serious criticism about the professional ethics of the alleged scientists who tried to hide data that contradicted their theories (they are not scientists -- they are fraudsters and politicians, not scientists; a scientist does science, hiding data that disagrees with your theory is not science).
If a medical researcher tries to hide the side effects of a drug, all of you will be quick to jump on him as unethical. The same standard should be held towards anyone doing research. Science does not make progress unless the truth is realized.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
what scientists do (sign petitions, playing golf, agreeing by faith what another scientist did without having studied it for himself) doesnt have anything to do with the science they do (satelite data, adhereing to the scientific method and not falsifying stuff)
The vikings did not leave. They were killed by the Inuit, who arrived at greenland after the vikings did and exploded in population because they weren't afraid to fish.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
scientists =/= climate scientists
climate scientists =/= scientists
Climate science is so piss poor in quality. At this point, I'm partial to putting them on level with alchemists. A few in there are pretty good though. I also think it is a prerequisite to believe in man-made global warming theory prior to becoming a climate scientist. Naturally there are very few skeptics among the crowd. It's a natural phenomenon when science gets politicized.
The latest Climate-gate shoe to drop is the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) accusation that the Hadley Center of Britain's Meteorological Office deliberately relied on a carefully selected 25% of Russia's weather stations that fit its theory of global warming.
Indeed it's well known that the Institute of Economic Analysis is a reputable source of paleoclimate research. I guess the coffin of AGW has been sealed.
Climate science is so piss poor in quality. At this point, I'm partial to putting them on level with alchemists. A few in there are pretty good though. I also think it is a prerequisite to believe in man-made global warming theory prior to becoming a climate scientist. Naturally there are very few skeptics among the crowd. It's a natural phenomenon when science gets politicized.
It's the same way most physicists believe in relativity and most biologists believe in evolution.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
scientists =/= climate scientists
Climate science is so piss poor in quality. At this point, I'm partial to putting them on level with alchemists.
lol thanks for the support gyth. I'm just looking at the mental gymnastics being done by all kinds of climate scientists. It's not the actual science that is being done, but the overreach to make it applicable to man made climate change and carbon dioxide that is pure garbage and alchemy.
The thermometer chronology folks for example do all sorts of adjustments to revise the more recent temperatures upwards to confirm their warming bias. They hardly do anything so thorough to capture the warming effects of human land use and other human activities. (It all has to be carbon dioxide.)
The climate models run on supercomputers are pure trash. Anyone that's seen econometric modeling would know how the sausage is being made. Climate models may be the best effort man has made to predict future climate but the best effort by no means good or adequate. (like alchemists' best efforts to turn iron into gold, ha!)
The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well. Then we're suppose to believe that trees are good thermometers despite 60 years of divergence. That's nearly 30% of the entire reliable thermometer record. (They might as well say they have no clue what is going on.)
Those studying clouds have the notion that warming will receive a positive feedback if upper troposphere water vapor increases and that's definitely what will happen. Their studies confirm their biases, of course, but only after they've eliminated all data that would invalidate their theory.
The upper oceans is cooling. There hasn't been significant warming trend for more than a decade. The AGW theory states that carbon dioxide causes warming which then causes climate change. So how does carbon dioxide cause climate change directly without manifesting itself as warming? The new climate change narrative is a complete non sequitir.
It doesn't mean that human activity or carbon dioxide doesn't have any effect, but the efforts of these climate scientists to exaggerate the social relevance of their research is ridiculous.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
Global warming is an effect of climate change. Climate change means more extreme temperatures and weather patterns which hurts everyone.
On February 17 2010 06:06 crabapple wrote: For anyone interested in the global warming debate in general, this video is a rich addition to your body of info.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
Global warming is an effect of climate change. Climate change means more extreme temperatures and weather patterns which hurts everyone.
Climate change could mean anything. It's so vague as to lose all meaning. To say that humans should do something to abate climate change would have a few prerequisites.
1. Qualify and quantify what human activities cause climate change and measure it accordingly. Just to say that there is climate change is insufficient because there is and has always been climate change in the form of natural variability. The leap of faith to blame it all on carbon dioxide is insufficient as human heat and particle pollution and land use have real and lasting effects. "Climate scientists" love to hand wave the 1960's 1970's cooling period on human aerosol production. It's so unscientific.
2. Develop and design methods to counteract human sources of climate change.
3. Make a value judgment on whether or not countering human sources of climate change is worthwhile. The other question is do humans want to play God on earth and try to keep all climates around the world static and even try to counter natural variability?
Also if carbon dioxide is to blame, then a prerequisite for climate change has to be global warming. Greenhouse gasses cannot affect global climate without first raising global temperatures. There is no proposed mechanism for direct relationship between carbon dioxide and climate change.
There is no also good evidence that climate has gotten more extreme. This year is par for El Nino. And also shit happens.
On November 22 2009 09:51 gchan wrote: In the years since then, with more scientists raising doubts about the accuracy of the data, whether there really is global warming, etc., the media hardly gave it any coverage. That's because it's not fear or sensationalism. It took something this drastic to stir the media enough to actually cover the topic.
The number of climate scientists who believe there isn't global warming is in the single digits out of thousands. It's not newsworthy because there aren't any.
31,000+ scientists have signed a petition against man-made global warming theories. Did you not even watch the senate debate?
scientists =/= climate scientists
Climate science is so piss poor in quality. At this point, I'm partial to putting them on level with alchemists.
*facepalm*
Don't make posts like this. Either contribute to & continue the discussion, or don't post.
On February 17 2010 06:06 crabapple wrote: For anyone interested in the global warming debate in general, this video is a rich addition to your body of info.
Oh god.
And hey, here's another one! I'm gonna look through your last 50 posts.
edit: looks clean! stop making posts like this though
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The thermometer chronology folks for example do all sorts of adjustments to revise the more recent temperatures upwards to confirm their warming bias. They hardly do anything so thorough to capture the warming effects of human land use and other human activities. (It all has to be carbon dioxide.)
Elaborate on these adjustments of recent temperatures.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The climate models run on supercomputers are pure trash. Anyone that's seen econometric modeling would know how the sausage is being made. Climate models may be the best effort man has made to predict future climate but the best effort by no means good or adequate. (like alchemists' best efforts to turn iron into gold, ha!)
Yeah, modeling the behavior of air masses and the behavior of people is just slightly different. Are the models that test circuitry or airplanes also pure trash?
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well.
Indeed, the correlation prior to sixty years ago correlates well with the existing temperature record, and prior to that, it correlates well with other proxies of temperatures as well. Curiously enough, rainfall and moisture are also related to climate.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: Then we're suppose to believe that trees are good thermometers despite 60 years of divergence. That's nearly 30% of the entire reliable thermometer record. (They might as well say they have no clue what is going on.)
That would be inaccurate as to explain the null hypothesis of no correlation is rejected when analyzing data from before the divergence problem, so unless you want to throw up your hands and claim that the rejection of the null hypothesis at high confidence levels is all some sort of massive coincidence, then the divergence problem is recent.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: Those studying clouds have the notion that warming will receive a positive feedback if upper troposphere water vapor increases and that's definitely what will happen. Their studies confirm their biases, of course, but only after they've eliminated all data that would invalidate their theory.
And what "data that would invalidate their theory" is running around that you know of?
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The upper oceans is cooling.
Source?
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: There hasn't been significant warming trend for more than a decade.
Warming is a long-term signal that over the short-term is swamped by natural variation. If you were to look at three-year trends then even the most drastic changes would not show significant warming at the 95% levels due to the broad spread of trends over short time periods.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The AGW theory states that carbon dioxide causes warming which then causes climate change. So how does carbon dioxide cause climate change directly without manifesting itself as warming? The new climate change narrative is a complete non sequitir.
The warming may lead to many other changes beyond simple warming. You can feel free to use the term "global warming," though, nobody's going to criticize or get mad at you.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: 1. Qualify and quantify what human activities cause climate change and measure it accordingly. Just to say that there is climate change is insufficient because there is and has always been climate change in the form of natural variability. The leap of faith to blame it all on carbon dioxide is insufficient as human heat and particle pollution and land use have real and lasting effects. "Climate scientists" love to hand wave the 1960's 1970's cooling period on human aerosol production. It's so unscientific.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well.
Indeed, the correlation prior to sixty years ago correlates well with the existing temperature record, and prior to that, it correlates well with other proxies of temperatures as well. Curiously enough, rainfall and moisture are also related to climate.
This one is easy. NO.
You are looking for a single principle component in the multivariate analysis not the combination of two or three or four or five.
If we are looking at a combination of rainfall, moisture, sun, carbon dioxide and temperature then there is no basis for saying that the past was any cooler than the present. It's a combination of all those factors right? If the present decline was some change in climate (i.e. all the other factors) what rules out that previous increases and declines weren't some kind of arrangement where climate and temperature offset each other?
And based on the modern data set, both a direct and inverse relationship exists between temperature and tree ring width? So if tree ring width increases, temperature could be either higher or lower?
BTW, this is how science works. One false prediction and divergence invalidates the entire theory. It has to be consistent all the time.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well.
Indeed, the correlation prior to sixty years ago correlates well with the existing temperature record, and prior to that, it correlates well with other proxies of temperatures as well. Curiously enough, rainfall and moisture are also related to climate.
This one is easy. NO.
You are looking for a single principle component in the multivariate analysis not the combination of two or three or four or five.
If we are looking at a combination of rainfall, moisture, sun, carbon dioxide and temperature then there is no basis for saying that the past was any cooler than the present. It's a combination of all those factors right? If the present decline was some change in climate (i.e. all the other factors) what rules out that previous increases and declines weren't some kind of arrangement where climate and temperature offset each other?
Tree rings correlate well with the temperature record prior to sixty years ago as well as other temperature proxies such as ice cores, boreholes, and underwater sediments.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: And based on the modern data set, both a direct and inverse relationship exists between temperature and tree ring width? So if tree ring width increases, temperature could be either higher or lower?
Scientists believe that something changed about sixty years ago in one particular tree ring set because the correlation which had been holding for a long time ceased to hold in that particular tree ring set.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: BTW, this is how science works. One false prediction and divergence invalidates the entire theory. It has to be consistent all the time.
The theory is, "tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960." It is similar to a theory like, "the tree outside my house grows with time," both of which are true up until the point something fucks them up like us cutting down said tree. False predictions result in a revision of the theory, which in this case is the caveat.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: One by one?
On February 25 2010 11:15 EmeraldSparks wrote:
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well.
Indeed, the correlation prior to sixty years ago correlates well with the existing temperature record, and prior to that, it correlates well with other proxies of temperatures as well. Curiously enough, rainfall and moisture are also related to climate.
This one is easy. NO.
You are looking for a single principle component in the multivariate analysis not the combination of two or three or four or five.
If we are looking at a combination of rainfall, moisture, sun, carbon dioxide and temperature then there is no basis for saying that the past was any cooler than the present. It's a combination of all those factors right? If the present decline was some change in climate (i.e. all the other factors) what rules out that previous increases and declines weren't some kind of arrangement where climate and temperature offset each other?
Tree rings correlate well with the temperature record prior to sixty years ago as well as other temperature proxies such as ice cores, boreholes, and underwater sediments.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: And based on the modern data set, both a direct and inverse relationship exists between temperature and tree ring width? So if tree ring width increases, temperature could be either higher or lower?
Scientists believe that something changed about sixty years ago in one particular tree ring set because the correlation which had been holding for a long time ceased to hold in that particular tree ring set.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: BTW, this is how science works. One false prediction and divergence invalidates the entire theory. It has to be consistent all the time.
The theory is, "tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960." It is similar to a theory like, "the tree outside my house grows with time," both of which are true up until the point something fucks them up like us cutting down said tree. False predictions result in a revision of the theory, which in this case is the caveat.
The argument might be that any correlation before it diverged was coincidental. However, I think his argument is that due to the fact that there's such a huge divergence now, the integrity of any data or conclusions based on such data is compromised. And he's right. Those trees weren't cut down, the bristlecone pine trees used in the PC formulas which were given huge weight were known to be problem sets.
You're going to have a hard time arguing against logic in this debate. Your last argument was extremely poor.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The thermometer chronology folks for example do all sorts of adjustments to revise the more recent temperatures upwards to confirm their warming bias. They hardly do anything so thorough to capture the warming effects of human land use and other human activities. (It all has to be carbon dioxide.)
Elaborate on these adjustments of recent temperatures.
This is the most visible. Quite a bit of the methodology is hidden in many of the other temperature records. Namely the "homogenization" process.
The USHCN methodology introduces a +.5 F base on adjustment alone. They'll brag about how they were very thorough in adjusting the temperature because the modern equipment detects lower temperatures.
Of course you can review the siting issues at http://www.surfacestations.org/ (open source science). The scientific paper is supposedly forthcoming. The best guess that USHCN will give poor siting issues is that it introduces some huge error bars into their numbers - which they assume will cancel out based on their large sample size.
The last step is based on the paper "Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record" by Karl. T.R., et al., 1988, Journal of Climate 1:1099-1123. Which says that urbanization adjustment is on average .06 C for urbanization for populations as small as 10000 (80 % less than 25000) based on a 1980 census.
This later paper http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/38601.pdf states that the average difference is .69 C and .89 C for two periods. There isn't much mention of industrial heat sources, and the second paper adds the qualifier that even the rural stations may suffer from creeping urbanization. Even at 1/5 of the .69C, that's .14C or double the 1988 estimate based on periods only 4 years later.
A new thermometer network is supposedly much better, but it'll be some time before it produces enough data to really analyze.
On February 25 2010 12:14 Element)LoGiC wrote: The argument might be that any correlation before it diverged was coincidental. However, I think his argument is that due to the fact that there's such a huge divergence now, the integrity of any data or conclusions based on such data is compromised. And he's right. Those trees weren't cut down, the bristlecone pine trees used in the PC formulas which were given huge weight were known to be problem sets.
Often what happens is a paradigm shift. For example a buffering or negative feedback process dominates to keep changes in contributing factors minimal but stops working after the buffer has been exhausted. If there is a paradigm shift around the 1950s, then there is nothing to rule out paradigm shifts in earlier periods.
Any valid theory must account for the paradigm shifts such that they are no longer paradigm shifts but rather variable that are well understood in the context of the theory. The large divergence only goes to show the magnitude of possible shifts in paradigm with respect to tree rings.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: One by one?
On February 25 2010 11:15 EmeraldSparks wrote:
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well.
Indeed, the correlation prior to sixty years ago correlates well with the existing temperature record, and prior to that, it correlates well with other proxies of temperatures as well. Curiously enough, rainfall and moisture are also related to climate.
This one is easy. NO.
You are looking for a single principle component in the multivariate analysis not the combination of two or three or four or five.
If we are looking at a combination of rainfall, moisture, sun, carbon dioxide and temperature then there is no basis for saying that the past was any cooler than the present. It's a combination of all those factors right? If the present decline was some change in climate (i.e. all the other factors) what rules out that previous increases and declines weren't some kind of arrangement where climate and temperature offset each other?
Tree rings correlate well with the temperature record prior to sixty years ago as well as other temperature proxies such as ice cores, boreholes, and underwater sediments.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: And based on the modern data set, both a direct and inverse relationship exists between temperature and tree ring width? So if tree ring width increases, temperature could be either higher or lower?
Scientists believe that something changed about sixty years ago in one particular tree ring set because the correlation which had been holding for a long time ceased to hold in that particular tree ring set.
On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote: BTW, this is how science works. One false prediction and divergence invalidates the entire theory. It has to be consistent all the time.
The theory is, "tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960." It is similar to a theory like, "the tree outside my house grows with time," both of which are true up until the point something fucks them up like us cutting down said tree. False predictions result in a revision of the theory, which in this case is the caveat.
The argument might be that any correlation before it diverged was coincidental. However, I think his argument is that due to the fact that there's such a huge divergence now, the integrity of any data or conclusions based on such data is compromised. And he's right. Those trees weren't cut down, the bristlecone pine trees used in the PC formulas which were given huge weight were known to be problem sets.
You're going to have a hard time arguing against logic in this debate. Your last argument was extremely poor.
My argument was that the divergence of a certain set of tree rings after 1960 does not invalidate the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy because tree rings correlate well with temperature in the known temperature record and with other temperature proxies and therefore can be used as a temperature proxy over certain periods of time.
On February 25 2010 12:34 TanGeng wrote: Any valid theory must account for the paradigm shifts such that they are no longer paradigm shifts but rather variable that are well understood in the context of the theory. The large divergence only goes to show the magnitude of possible shifts in paradigm with respect to tree rings.
Not really. Some things are just out of the scope of some theories. The theory of gravitation held up even when people knew that it wasn't correctly predicting the precession of Mercury. Maxwell's equations held up pretty well until people noticed that they fucked up when you applied them to really small things and these things were definitely not well understood in the context of the theory. This didn't stop either of them from being broadly true.
On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote: The thermometer chronology folks for example do all sorts of adjustments to revise the more recent temperatures upwards to confirm their warming bias. They hardly do anything so thorough to capture the warming effects of human land use and other human activities. (It all has to be carbon dioxide.)
Elaborate on these adjustments of recent temperatures.
This is the most visible. Quite a bit of the methodology is hidden in many of the other temperature records. Namely the "homogenization" process.
The USHCN methodology introduces a +.5 F base on adjustment alone. They'll brag about how they were very thorough in adjusting the temperature because the modern equipment detects lower temperatures.
The intention of the homogenization process is to adjust for processes which would cause the temperatures read to differ from the temperatures of the sites. The application of the homogeneity adjustment should not insert a bias that does not exist. Are you arguing that the homogenization process itself (step four) is an inaccurate way to treat the data, or are you simply claiming that the adjustment in step 6 is incorrect?
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote: Of course you can review the siting issues at http://www.surfacestations.org/ (open source science). The scientific paper is supposedly forthcoming. The best guess that USHCN will give poor siting issues is that it introduces some huge error bars into their numbers - which they assume will cancel out based on their large sample size.
Do they have an estimate of the average effect on temperature due to the quality of siting?
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote: The last step is based on the paper "Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record" by Karl. T.R., et al., 1988, Journal of Climate 1:1099-1123. Which says that urbanization adjustment is on average .06 C for urbanization for populations as small as 10000 (80 % less than 25000) based on a 1980 census.
The abstract states: "stations with populations near 10 000 are shown to average 0.1°C warmer for the mean annual temperature than nearby stations located in rural areas with populations less than 2000," and the 0.06 C figure seems to be for a population of 2000. For a city with a population of a hundred thousand, million, and ten million the expected difference from Karl's paper is 0.32 C, 0.91 C, and 2.57 C respectively.
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote: This later paper http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/38601.pdf states that the average difference is .69 C and .89 C for two periods. There isn't much mention of industrial heat sources, and the second paper adds the qualifier that even the rural stations may suffer from creeping urbanization. Even at 1/5 of the .69C, that's .14C or double the 1988 estimate based on periods only 4 years later.
The particular natures of the sources aren't addressed in either paper, as they are based off of statistical comparisons. What the particular sources of the heat may be are irrelevant to this identification. Furthermore, the method used to determine whether a station is urban in the latter paper depends on the normalized difference vegetation index and is elaborated on a different paper published in 1999, and I do not currently know (and you have not asserted) what populations of city tend to be classified as urban. Therefore there has not been demonstrated to be a contradiction between these two papers.
Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome.
On February 25 2010 13:18 PobTheCad wrote: Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome.
McIntyre demonstrated that the data was "cherry-picked" by picking a huge group of trees that were all in the same place and then finding the tree ring record for all those trees in the same place (KHAD) and noticing that his results were different form the ones that others had gotten. The tree ring data utilized by Mann used trees from all four regions. It turned out that this one region did not return the same result as for all four regions.
Keith Briffa wrote: Figure D: This Figure is equivalent to Figure C except that at each site the RCS curve, and resulting site indices, are calculated including the Yamal_SF data as well as the measurement data from living trees. The dominance of the common sub-fossil measurements produces a very similar RCS curve in each case (upper panel). The indices produced exhibit a similar picture of recent growth trends varying between sites, as that seen in Figure C, with mean tree-ring index trends higher for the POR and YAD sites, lowest (even negative after 1970 with respect to the long-term mean) at KHAD, and at an intermediate level at JAH. The black line in the lower panel represents the chronology (from 1750) produced using all of the data, Yamal_All, standardised with a Yamal_All RCS curve.
This does not demonstrate that the tree ring data was cherry-picked to show warming.
Furthermore, the hockey stick remains even if you discard all tree ring data.
Well I am questioning the basis of paleo-climatology through tree rings. It's above and beyond Mann's questionable statistical inventions and Briffa's unexplained sampling procedure.
Apparently the shift in paradigm between correlation and divergence can just be ignored because well the paradigm will never ever change again. 1960's change in paradigm was just a fluke - an inexplicable fluke!! Everyone knows about it, but can't explain why. God must have done it. Seriously, trust us that it never happened in the past! At least with gravity and Maxwell's, later scientists explained the divergence from prediction and basically created new theories on top of the existing ones.
USHCN is most open about methodology. The other temperature records are black boxes that spit out temperature anomalies.
Margins of error according to NOAA is +/- 2 C, but usually they are warming biases like air conditioning or next to cars. The noise is larger than the signal. It's still possible to coax out the signal if you apply the correct error correction methodology. That's not done, of course.
I don't care about convincing any firm believers. I also don't care about disproving global warming or climate change. The primary issue is the magnitude of the warming and the unprecedented level of warmth and that hinges on feedback and accuracy of proxies. I read some of the papers on feedback and there isn't much confidence in a conclusion on way or another. The proxies are not very good to be polite.
On February 25 2010 13:18 PobTheCad wrote: Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome.
McIntyre demonstrated that the data was "cherry-picked" by picking a huge group of trees that were all in the same place and then finding the tree ring record for all those trees in the same place (KHAD) and noticing that his results were different form the ones that others had gotten. The tree ring data utilized by Mann used trees from all four regions. It turned out that this one region did not return the same result as for all four regions.
Keith Briffa wrote: Figure D: This Figure is equivalent to Figure C except that at each site the RCS curve, and resulting site indices, are calculated including the Yamal_SF data as well as the measurement data from living trees. The dominance of the common sub-fossil measurements produces a very similar RCS curve in each case (upper panel). The indices produced exhibit a similar picture of recent growth trends varying between sites, as that seen in Figure C, with mean tree-ring index trends higher for the POR and YAD sites, lowest (even negative after 1970 with respect to the long-term mean) at KHAD, and at an intermediate level at JAH. The black line in the lower panel represents the chronology (from 1750) produced using all of the data, Yamal_All, standardised with a Yamal_All RCS curve.
This does not demonstrate that the tree ring data was cherry-picked to show warming.
Furthermore, the hockey stick remains even if you discard all tree ring data.
Actually if you read the methodology carefully, you'd notice that they cherry picked trees that match the temperature record. It's hidden behind some statistical jargon, but it's still cherry picking.
The good correlation is no fluke! It's because they cherry picked.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote: Well I am questioning the basis of paleo-climatology through tree rings. It's above and beyond Mann's questionable statistical inventions and Briffa's unexplained sampling procedure.
Apparently the shift in paradigm between correlation and divergence can just be ignored because well the paradigm will never ever change again. 1960's change in paradigm was just a fluke - an inexplicable fluke!! Everyone knows about it, but can't explain why. God must have done it. Seriously, trust us that it never happened in the past! At least with gravity and Maxwell's, later scientists explained the divergence from prediction and basically created new theories on top of the existing ones.
So maybe one day we'll know and right now we don't. The divergence was discovered in 1859 and the explanation was discovered in 1915. Did people just say Newton is bunk because "it's God wot done it"? An unexplained anomaly does not mean that a theory cannot be broadly correct.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote: USHCN is most open about methodology. The other temperature records are black boxes that spit out temperature anomalies.
Most science is "black box" in that tons of people don't publish all their MATLAB code. The procedures done (homogenization, etc) are usually indicated by the various entities what are compiling their temperature records. The satellite record avoids this problem entirely.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote: Margins of error according to NOAA is +/- 2 C, but usually they are warming biases like air conditioning or next to cars. The noise is larger than the signal. It's still possible to coax out the signal if you apply the correct error correction methodology. That's not done, of course.
If there is no systematic bias (and simply random bias) then averaging over a shitton of stations will reduce the standard deviation of the error. Noise is reduced by averaging.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote: I don't care about convincing any firm believers. I also don't care about disproving global warming or climate change. The primary issue is the magnitude of the warming and the unprecedented level of warmth and that hinges on feedback and accuracy of proxies. I read some of the papers on feedback and there isn't much confidence in a conclusion on way or another. The proxies are not very good to be polite.
People are still determining the feedbacks and estimating the resulting climate sensitivity (which people are constraining with models and paleoclimate reconstructions) and the proxies don't have very good resolution, but nobody has done anything to suggest that, say, any of the proxies are off by a full degree Celsius or that the speed and magnitude current warming are not unprecedented in the short-term (tens of thousands of years).
On February 25 2010 13:18 PobTheCad wrote: Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome.
McIntyre demonstrated that the data was "cherry-picked" by picking a huge group of trees that were all in the same place and then finding the tree ring record for all those trees in the same place (KHAD) and noticing that his results were different form the ones that others had gotten. The tree ring data utilized by Mann used trees from all four regions. It turned out that this one region did not return the same result as for all four regions.
Keith Briffa wrote: Figure D: This Figure is equivalent to Figure C except that at each site the RCS curve, and resulting site indices, are calculated including the Yamal_SF data as well as the measurement data from living trees. The dominance of the common sub-fossil measurements produces a very similar RCS curve in each case (upper panel). The indices produced exhibit a similar picture of recent growth trends varying between sites, as that seen in Figure C, with mean tree-ring index trends higher for the POR and YAD sites, lowest (even negative after 1970 with respect to the long-term mean) at KHAD, and at an intermediate level at JAH. The black line in the lower panel represents the chronology (from 1750) produced using all of the data, Yamal_All, standardised with a Yamal_All RCS curve.
This does not demonstrate that the tree ring data was cherry-picked to show warming.
Furthermore, the hockey stick remains even if you discard all tree ring data.
Actually if you read the methodology carefully, you'd notice that they cherry picked trees that match the temperature record. It's hidden behind some statistical jargon, but it's still cherry picking.
The good correlation is no fluke! It's because they cherry picked.
Can you highlight for me the parts of the methodology that amount to cherry picking to match the temperature record?
On February 25 2010 14:02 PobTheCad wrote: Well at least we can agree on one thing : Mann cherry picked the data.
Here is the hockey stick graph with cherry picked data in red and in green where the whole dataset is taken into account.
"Cherry picking" data is not the same as selecting data for analysis. For example, throwing out significant outliers is selecting data for analysis but it is not cherry picking as the term indicates deliberate ignorance of data that would suggest the contrary. Attempting to reduce noise by throwing out outliers is not cherry picking (it's not exactly what was done in this case, but it's an example.)
Also I'm not sure why you would link to a refutation of your own point.
[[EDIT]] The "merged" case seems to be one where a whole ton of trees from the KHAD were thrown into the analysis, a region which Briffa showed was not very representative of the larger region in the analysis to which I linked.
I can't speak to the accuracy of tree ring data. But I do know the following:
- There has been no warming since 1995 - Climate data has been withheld, destroyed, or lost - There is a track record of "errors" in the climate report submitted to the UN....such as saying glaciers are melting when they aren't, and the sea level is rising when it isn't - There are huge implications with climate legislation such as government controlling industry and rich nations controlling poor nations
It just seems like BS. Especially the first two. Why has there been no warming in the last 15 years, and why don't they release their raw data. Either one of those two alone is enough for me to personally not believe global warming is an urgent issue.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote: I can't speak to the accuracy of tree ring data. But I do know the following:
- There has been no warming since 1995
Presumably this is being sourced from the BBC interview with Phil Jones. A linear regression taken from 1995 to now demonstrates a a trend of 0.12 C per decade increase. He merely mentioned that this increase was not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, which is different from saying that there has been no warming. Yearly temperature is noisy and long periods of observation are necessary to determine statistical significance at the 95% confidence level (for example I don't think any 3-year warming period in history is significant at that level); I believe this positive trend is significant at the 90% level but that's apparently not what Dr. Jones uses in his lab.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote: - Climate data has been withheld, destroyed, or lost
The primary allegation of the withholding of data pertains to information which the CRU cannot legally release because of agreements it has entered into with national meteorological agencies. The information that is not so constrained is publicly available. There was an amount of data which was lost because data storage from the 70s and 80s (magnetic tape, fuck yeah) was expensive for the researchers to hang on to.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote: - There is a track record of "errors" in the climate report submitted to the UN....such as saying glaciers are melting when they aren't, and the sea level is rising when it isn't
Yeah, sometimes reports have errors in them. It happens.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote: - There are huge implications with climate legislation such as government controlling industry and rich nations controlling poor nations.
All governments already regulate industrial emissions in some capacity or another. China probably has enough clout to prevent developing nations from being curbstomped as it has significant interests in that area. The idea of "rich nations controlling poor nations" isn't really accurate; just look at the Copenhagen meeting. There was a threatened boycott. Nothing was done. It was ridiculous.
On February 25 2010 14:06 EmeraldSparks wrote: "Cherry picking" data is not the same as selecting data for analysis. For example, throwing out significant outliers is selecting data for analysis but it is not cherry picking as the term indicates deliberate ignorance of data that would suggest the contrary. Attempting to reduce noise by throwing out outliers is not cherry picking (it's not exactly what was done in this case, but it's an example.)
Also I'm not sure why you would link to a refutation of your own point.
[[EDIT]] The "merged" case seems to be one where a whole ton of trees from the KHAD were thrown into the analysis, a region which Briffa showed was not very representative of the larger region in the analysis to which I linked.
The specific statistical method that selects for trees that are better matches against the thermometer record is mentioned by Briffa as a primary source. If you look at his paper though, it doesn't mention any methodology for selection and rejection.
Also outliers have to be rejected for good reason and not just because they don't agree with the rest e.g. some extenuating circumstances that caused the outlier. If outliers are rejected only for the reason that they don't agree, then the paper should include a sensitivity analysis to show the effect of including or not including the outliers. In that situation the more inclusive result is more valid because it encompasses more of the data. The "selected" data is rather an alternative narrative.
Throwing out KHAD trees is bullshit. What's the basis for saying KHAD wasn't representative and not the other way around. Looking at the map, KHAD drastically increased the geographical diversity of the trees. It's possible this is just a case of Briffa's confirmation bias at work. This is why in medical studies, most experiments are conducted as double-blinds.
Poor methodology by papers supporting AGW is the primary reason why I don't believe the entire cataclysmic global warming narrative. Climate science fails hardest on proper methodology and independent reproduction of results.
There's been a confusion because of an inconsistency in the correlation between tree ring data and climate. They don't know the cause. They experimented in order to find out.
Fox News and other crazy people took it out of context. Unintelligent people took the opportunity to propagate the quote mined stuff and refuse to investigate because they would have to admit that they're wrong: denial is easier.
Cheers.
Edit: I've been reading some the last few posts a little more in depth and it's just hilarious. So many of you just take one source with no credentials, figure it's true because it fits the side you're arguing for... Bad news websites, pretend scientists and quote mines aren't really trustworthy.
Really that's no different from saying evolution is a lie, which is no different from saying gravity and germ theory are a lie. It's true that you have to think critically of those things and not believe everything... Some people are just not very reasonable about it. We're all biased for a certain side to a certain extent but you really have to turn that off as much as possible and look at the data.
On February 26 2010 02:45 Djzapz wrote: Here's the story...
There's been a confusion because of an inconsistency in the correlation between tree ring data and climate. They don't know the cause. They experimented in order to find out.
Fox News and other crazy people took it out of context. Unintelligent people took the opportunity to propagate the quote mined stuff and refuse to investigate because they would have to admit that they're wrong: denial is easier.
Cheers.
Edit: I've been reading some the last few posts a little more in depth and it's just hilarious. So many of you just take one source with no credentials, figure it's true because it fits the side you're arguing for... Bad news websites, pretend scientists and quote mines aren't really trustworthy.
Really that's no different from saying evolution is a lie, which is no different from saying gravity and germ theory are a lie. It's true that you have to think critically of those things and not believe everything... Some people are just not very reasonable about it. We're all biased for a certain side to a certain extent but you really have to turn that off as much as possible and look at the data.
This is not just theory, observation, and falsification. This is an act of forecasting. This is the only basis for establishing the value of a previously unknown variable - the temperature of the past. Analogies to germ theory and gravity doesn't capture the activity of forecasting an otherwise unknowable value. (Evolution is still unobserved but eminently plausible and there hasn't been any demonstrated departure from its predictions unlike tree rings and temperature.)
They (the paleo-climatologists using tree rings) are trying to project their understanding of temperature into the past. Without a proper explanation of the present lack of correlation, there is no confidence of accuracy of the proxy's ability to reflect the past. The paradigm that gave good correlation of tree rings to temperatures might break down at any moment in the past like it did in 1960's.
This is not just theory, observation, and falsification. This is an act of forecasting. This is the only basis for establishing the value of a previously unknown variable - the temperature of the past. Analogies to germ theory and gravity doesn't capture the activity of forecasting an otherwise unknowable value. (Evolution is still unobserved but eminently plausible and there hasn't been any demonstrated departure from its predictions unlike tree rings and temperature.)
In science, a theory aims (amongst other things) to predict certain outcomes. For instance, we use what we know about gravity and other variables to launch stuff in space. We don't 'know' that gravity will be the same in 2 minutes but to think it may not be seems absurd because of an observed trend.
In other fields, this trend may have correlations - those correlations may not all be causation - this is a source of ambiguities and those uncertainties makes science all the more important.
The reason why I made the comparison between scientific theories and this 'work in progress' by science is that, while it is imperfect, science is the most reputable source of knowledge we have so far. That's not to say we should jump to the conclusion that science is always right... It's wrong a lot of the time... However, when the scientific community leans heavily towards one side with all the statistics, and the opposition continuously uses forged data, quote mines and other types of false information, it becomes clear that they don't really have a strong case to present.
This is merely a vague comparison but weather can't be explained with mathematical equations, much like evolution. Few people would argue that Newton was wrong about the mathematical formulas he found out. Yet, two very good scientists may argue about the evolution of human emotions and how it affected natural selection and whatnot. Those ambiguous parts of a certain field of science makes it easier for the uneducated to cry wolf. Likewise, meteorologists will get railed on because they can't get it right 100% of the time because the end result depends on too many variables.
I'm not saying that nobody should ever question the veracity of this issue. What's ridiculous is to see people pick their 'side' so quickly with very little knowledge of the issue at hand.
The trend we are observing now isn't clear enough to be worthy of the name 'theory', and frankly, I'm not too sure where I stand on the specifics. There are many types of people, I'll list a few.
-Global warming is a conspiracy theory -Global warming doesn't happen and I KNOW -Global warming probably doesn't happen -I don't know (Agnostic) (Life is too short to be a simpleton. Use your brain and get an opinion unless you're doing something more important than pondering on this boring topic - in which case, I'm jealous of you!) -Global warming probably happens -Global warming (probably) happens and it (may be) man made -Global warming happens and it IS man made and it's going to kill us all in like omg 35 minutes!
First, I want to say that I think both extremes are ridiculously dumb.
Also, people who go completely against science don't have any science backing them up or point out at parts of the data which aren't fully understood and such.
I just think it's weird to be so skeptical of what science says but so gullible when some guy (sometimes with a bible) says he has a better explanation based on (something) (someone) said (at some point).
For instance, someone posted earlier that global warming had stopped in 1995. Now that idea has been debunked over and over again. Why would someone so skeptical fall for something so easy to falsify? Hypothetically, even if global warming turns out to be a complete fiasco, it doesn't change the fact that the 1995 thing is complete BS.
On February 26 2010 06:26 Djzapz wrote: The reason why I made the comparison between scientific theories and this 'work in progress' by science is that, while it is imperfect, science is the most reputable source of knowledge we have so far. That's not to say we should jump to the conclusion that science is always right... It's wrong a lot of the time... However, when the scientific community leans heavily towards one side with all the statistics, and the opposition continuously uses forged data, quote mines and other types of false information, it becomes clear that they don't really have a strong case to present.
Which side of the debate are you taking about? That statement about forging data and quote mines applies to both alarmists and skeptics - especially the IPCC.
Overall it's incumbent upon the scientific community to present a solid case for AGW if they want immediate action. Examining the methods of the climate science community shows sloppy quality control, poor methodology, no visibility into procedures, or plain bad practice in making forecasts.
An improved understanding of the reliability of forecasts would be really beneficial to understanding the "quality" of climate science. A healthy skepticism of the open-ended and unscientific speculation of doomsday scenarios injected into climate science by academics trying to exaggerate the social relevance of their research would also help.
On February 26 2010 06:26 Djzapz wrote: For instance, someone posted earlier that global warming had stopped in 1995. Now that idea has been debunked over and over again. Why would someone so skeptical fall for something so easy to falsify? Hypothetically, even if global warming turns out to be a complete fiasco, it doesn't change the fact that the 1995 thing is complete BS.
1995 thing was Phil Jones of the HADCRU, basically one of the biggest AGW proponents. All I take away from that is natural warming and cooling phenomenon are huge and unexplained.
Personally I think that AGW exists. Humans can cause it. But the carbon dioxide contribution is not the significant portion. Other aspects like pollution, land use, and deforestation are more important. Abatement can be done on both a local level and in ways that do not cripple the lifestyle of the general population.
The other inclination is to not dump nearly an unlimited amount of material and effort for something that may or may not be real.
EPT
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