Stephen Colbert famously complained that "reality has a liberal bias." Now, as 192 nations meet in Copenhagen on climate change, the Right and Business have seized on some stolen emails to argue against the nearly unanimous scientific judgment that global warming is a real and present danger. We've seen this movie before...call it Fatal Distraction.
There's the scientific method, until recently not identified with a particular party or ideology, which questions premises with examples, evidence, and peer-reviewed studies. And then there's a faith-based method of reasoning, which basically is more catechistic than empiric -- that is, instead of facts leading to conclusions, conclusions lead to facts. At the intersection of science and politics, remember Terry Schiavo and tobacco causing cancer?
Because the Schiavo story was appealing to to pro-life conservatives -- notwithstanding every medical diagnosis -- Republican leaders from President Bush to Majority Leader Tom DeLay to Senator Bill Frist all argued in 2005 that this brain-dead woman was alive and that her husband shouldn't exercise an end-of-life decision.
And in 1994, eight tobacco executives swore under oath that they didn't know whether tobacco caused cancer. Yes, there were countless correlations between smoking and the deaths of smokers -- first declared as fact in the 1964 Surgeon's General Report -- but was there proof?
For a while in both cases, politics trumped science, as Lysenko-ism infected public policy. Lysenko was the Soviet biologist who conveniently came up with the theory that learned traits could be inherited. Soviet authorities were only too happy to adopt this hoax in the service of pushing the notion that their people were a self-replicating superior breed. This foolishness set back Soviet science for decades.
Now some hacked and publicized emails from The Climate Research Unit in Great Britain have energized those who deny the existence of global warming. Out of thousands of emails, one quotes a scientist referring to a "trick" used to massage temperature statistics to "hide the decline" in temperatures. Limbaugh and Beck quickly cited the emails as proof that global warming itself was a trick. Sarah Palin concluded that President Obama should avoid Copenhagen until the emails were further investigated. Republican Congressman Darrell Issa denounced the Obama administration for using "flawed science created by a community of bullies to push through ideologically based policies."
So here's where we are: our Energy and EPA offices, the governments of nearly all the world's countries and the scientific community believe that heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and methane) produced by human activity is the major contributor to a .4C degree increase in temperature since the 1970s and, if uninterrupted, will lead to a 4C degree increase by 2100, which will dramatically raise sea levels, drown millions, drastically limit rainfall in some areas and bring extreme weather in others.
On the other side are coal executives, conservative radio show hosts, Sarah Palin et al and a handful of skeptics saying more proof and debate is necessary before adopting public policies that could reduce jobs in America.
First, while some jobs will be lost in coal-producing states, many other "green" jobs will be produced in a shift to a low-carbon economy in solar, alternate energy, weatherization and other sectors.
But second, and more significantly, it's true that more exchange and debate sounds appealing, like when President Bush suggested that both evolution and creationism should be taught in classrooms. But it's one thing if two schools of thought should be taught in religion class, another if they should be taught in science class, since one school is science-based and the other is faith-based. And quite another if your house is burning down and two insurance companies are debating who should assume liability while fire trucks are kept waiting.
With the polar ice caps melting and some coastal cities starting to submerge -- and the science community concurring with near unanimity that human activity is the precipitating cause -- a few emails from some loose-lipped scientists kibutzing among themselves should not and will not throw a monkey wrench into the Copenhagen Summit. As the UN Panel on Climate Change announced at the start of the talks yesterday, "We've run out of time."
There's a fair debate over how much reduction President Obama should pledge when he represents the American position next week -- as low as 13% by 2020 or as much as 25% suggested by the UN Panel. But there's no satisfying opponents who fulfill the axiom that "to the jaundiced eye all looks yellow" -- modern-day Luddites who elevate politics and profits above science and who always demanded more and more scientific proof that smoking causes cancer and that man descended from apes. Now that they mention it, has anyone actually seen an ape grow into a man?
Jennifer Grayson: Eco Etiquette: Help! My Dad Doesn't Believe In Global Warming
My father is an extremely intelligent man, and I respect his advice about a lot of things. I'm embarrassed to admit, however, that he's a...
The fact that oil is a limited resource makes for the need to develop other means of power generation.
If in the process scaremongering can be used so that extra taxes can be levied - so much the better for the government.
Global warming and rising sea-levels? How come the Dutch have not drowned yet, when "some islands" are making plans to evacuate? Holland lies for 50% BELOW sea level and the government has done nothing to rise the levees. And why are only some islands doing this and not others?
The fact that the tundras melt and drop between 10 and 20 metres makes for a huge reservoir in which the "rising sea" can be contained - with great ease, since the are is about 10 times the amount of melting ice.
Taking melting ice into consideration, why do we concentrate on half the evidence - the North Pole? It has been known for a long time already that when northern ice diminishes, the southern ice increases and vice versa.
While pollution is real and needs to be curbed, the scaremongering is way over the top.
0.4 degrees of rising temps and we should all panic? What a joke!
I've seen some Global Warning deniers posting on this web-site claim that science is the new religion.
In reality, it's the deniers who are demonstrating a quasi-religious mind-set: those who accept global warming as real do so because the vast majority of scientific evidence world-wide leads them to that conclusion; the deniers start off with a belief that Global Warming isn't real and basically latch on to anything which supports that belief.
The skeptics immediately pounced on the leaked emails, claiming that they proved (read: confirmed their belief) that Global Warming is a myth, whereas in reality, at the very worst the emails indicated that a handful of scientists in the UK may have falsified some data, which in no way disproves the finding of the thousands of other Climate Change scientists, world-wide.
The reason the emails are so powerful is because they seem to confirm exactly the skeptics' argument, i.e. the aggressive claims by policitians and many scientists that the science is settled is a tactic used to avoid rigorous debate.
To simply say that "a handful of scientists falsified some data" begs the obvious question - Why did they falsify the data? By their own words they did it in order to fit the data into their existing theory. (They also admit to obstructing the sharing of data with others.)
Also, refering to Dr. Jones at the CRU and Michael Mann at Penn State as "some scientists" is disingenuous. We all know they're in the top echelon of climate scientists and are cited throughout the literature, especially in the IPCC reports.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.htm
Just like a completed application to Harvard is worth slightly less than a degree.
Although I applaud the countries' attempt to mandate their countries' carbon emissions perhaps if we all as "one" make as many little changes as possible in our daily lives, that may jump start the healing.
I am skeptical because climate science is soft science. There is no "control Earth" that verifies what the Earth's temperature "should be" in the absence of anthropogenic CO2. And I don't think Earth's climate is simple enough to tease out a single forcing (especially if, as alarmists claim, CO2 is the most signifcant forcing). There is huge potential for the omitted variable problem.
The emails are only part of the problem - the comments embedded in the program code are equally damning. "Artificially adjust" appears in countless places. You mention the scientific method - observation ALWAYS trumps theory in the scientific method. When data doesn't support your theory, you adjust the theory - not the observed data.
A final thought: Do you really think rising sea levels are literally going to drown people? Are people going to stand in the exact same place for 90 years as water slowly trickles in? I would hope no IPCC scientist made that claim, but then again, who knows anymore?
You consider the atmospheres of Mars, Earth and Venus and come back and tell me that The Greenhouse Effect does not exist.
∆T = F(C2) – F(C1), where F(c) = Ln(1+1.2c+0.005c2+0.0000014c3)
Acting alone, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels would produce about 1-1.2C of warming. I don't dispute this.
What I question are the feedback assumptions that produce catastrophe. In all long-term stable systems in nature, disturbances are diminished by negative feedbacks. Climate alarmist forecasts assume large positive feedbacks that amplify the disturbance, overwhelming any negative feedbacks within the system. To get to 4C you need to use a feedback factor of 75%, which I think is WAY too high.
In short, I don't dispute the effect. I dispute the enormous coefficient placed before that effect.
The Greenhouse Effect exists. It's the reason why all of us were not alive.
If it did not exist...that is to say that if our Atmospheric blanket did not insulate, we would never have to be too concerned...
It would be freezing and none of us would be alive.
What does Terry Schiavo have to do with this?
STOP BREATHING.
Ask any EMT, it's one of the first things that you check...
But it's just COMMON SENSE.
In the end, I suspect we are doomed. Between those determined to deny the facts because their lifestyle might need to change; the Rapture-crew who actively want extinction and the tide of modern Know-Nothingism that carries Palin along, I doubt anything will get done ever. There are islands which are even now making evacuation plans due to global warming but we in the developed world are always going to be more concerned with whether China or India is going to do something or how much it will cost or whether it needs more study or... One excuse after another until our chance passes us by.
Those (few but loud) climate "deniers" are really saying they disagree with higher taxes and more regulations to deal with the problem, especially since China and India and other developing nations will be producing very large amounts of greenhouse gases over the next couple decades.
Also, when scientists start making policy recommendations, they do show their liberal bias. Just because these guys are well-educated doesn't mean they understand public policy and in fact most don't. Dems and Libs that want to control everyone's behavior use the real dangers of climate change as their justification for higher taxes and more regulations that will hurt the US economy. This doesn't mean we shouldn't consider those policy responses but others exist as well.
There's your first problem then: What to do about all the UNreasonable people.
Whether it's true or not true, the fact remains that we're poisoning our water and poluting our air with our current methods of doing things and because of that, people are dying.
Deny or agree with global warming, these facts remain and it's these facts that we're being cleverly diverted from by the big polluters and poisoners with their smoke-and-mirrors tactics.
I agree. I happen to think the preponderance of evidence fully supports global climate change, but even laying that aside, there are a ton of good reasons for reducing our carbon footprint.
Fossil fuels pollute the land, the air and the water. Our supplies of them are limited. One way or the other, we're going to have to make some serious lifestyle changes in the US, and we're going to have to make them soon, or our quality of life is going to start going downhill fast.