The Farce of Global Warming

[Surlethe]

You've sort of answered your own question: The people who would willingly do this would want our society to "drastically cut back on its use of our main fuel source, transportation, and, in general, radically alter the way Western civilization is structured."

In other words, anti-industrialists who are out to make industrial and consumerist society into enemies of the world.

No sane person wants to give up the massive convenience of fossil fuels and easy transportation and undergo the social upheaval required to restructure Western civilization; the idea that there are lots of people (and the overwhelming majority of scientists, to boot) who believe in global warming because they want its consequences is as absurd as the argument that atheists don't believe in a god because they don't want to believe in an afterlife or deity, instead of because it's what logic tells them.

[Magus]

No sane person wants to give up the massive convenience of fossil fuels and easy transportation and undergo the social upheaval required to restructure Western civilization; the idea that there are lots of people (and the overwhelming majority of scientists, to boot) who believe in global warming because they want its consequences is as absurd as the argument that atheists don't believe in a god because they don't want to believe in an afterlife or deity, instead of because it's what logic tells them.

Preaching to the choir.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

Holy fuck, you're an idiot. You play the typical Republitard/Fundie conspiracy bullshit about how 'political correctness' prevents the truth!

Alright, let's hear your specific claims, and we'll counter them. You just linked 3 studies, so make some claims (instead of just saying the whole thing is bullshit and linking 3 broad pieces of information).

No more a conspiracy than Galileo being forced to recant his belief int he helio-centric model. The last time the scientific community was this enthralled by an idea (so much so that scientists from almost every specialization tie their theories to it) was about an imminent threat that would doom the human race and I doubt many of you have even heard of it since it was so thoroughly destroyed as much by the fact that nothing ever came of it as by new evidence and methods.
A thousand years ago it was a fact (as much if not more so than the 'fact' of global warming) that the earth was flat. Five hundred years ago it was a fact that the earth was the center of the universe. A hundred years ago it was a fact that the human race was plummeting towards a genetic disaster (eugenics) Ten years ago El Nino was the cause of everything from un-seasonal weather patterns (true) to freak weather anomalies (maybe) to cancer (probably not). The track record for this sort of scientific behavior is not exactly stellar. I'm not trying to be a martyr, there are plenty out there with more facts than I who will do nicely for that purpose.

and what's with this 'no sane person...give up conveniences...fossil fuels' bullshit, Try building a nuclear reactor somewhere, before the Oil Companies even get their lawyers together you'll be beating your way through a pack of protesters who drive only electric cars, clothe themselves only in organic fibers etc. Saying arguing that people can't possibly be that way is like arguing that the sun can't possibly be bright, just look at it and you;ll see your wrong.
I don't know why the scientistific community continues supporting Global Warming the way they do, but I don't know why they supported Eugenics, or the helio-centric universe either but there it is.

[Covenant]

There's no such thing as a martyr to a wrong idea. That's just ideological roadkill.

Galileo could back up his claims. He really shouldn't have had to, since the greeks had already proven the Earth was spherical. Galileo was forced to recant by people who found his idea inconvenient, troublesome, and not fitting their ideological framework for what it SHOULD be.

You're the one denying all the science that tells us that this is happening. You do realize that, in this case, we're all the Galileos and you're just that one last Priest hanging onto the idea that we go back to the outmoded worldview we had before? That's what you're asking us to do. To ignore evidence. To explain it away. To cover it up. First it was that there's no global warming at all. Then it was that we aren't causing it. Next it'll be that we're causing it but current levels aren't high enough to change anything and we've already solved 90 pecent of it. Or that it's China's fault and that we're not to blame.

Please, do not wrap yourself in the cloth of a man who is beset by ideologues. I've looked for evidence against it. I delighted in Penn and Teller's shredding of the average bullshitbrained evironmentalist. I'm happy to cut down people who agree with me for agreeing with me for the wrong, unsubstantiated reasons. But there is just no evidence for it. There is no great scientific conspiracy. Don't you think that if Science was ruled by some sort of, I dunno, we'll call them Learned Elders, and that there was a conspiracy to pervert the world to liberal hippy viewpoints... don't you think they'd have fixed this Stem Cell nonsense by now, and not still be beholden to the illiterate right-wing people clinging to government for a bit longer?

You're just digging a deeper hole.

As for nukes, I've got nothing against them. You can't paint us all with the same brush, you realize. We don't go to Hippy School to learn how to all agree on things. We don't have a Talking Points memo either. Some of us like nuclear power just fine. And maybe, just maybe, some of those idiot hippies have a point buried somewhere in their planet-loving brains. You're the only one pontificating about what you think is right based on a feeling or a desire. The rest of us are using science. You're not Galileo, and we are not the Great Liberal Conspiracy.

[Surlethe]

and what's with this 'no sane person...give up conveniences...fossil fuels' bullshit, Try building a nuclear reactor somewhere, before the Oil Companies even get their lawyers together you'll be beating your way through a pack of protesters who drive only electric cars, clothe themselves only in organic fibers etc. Saying arguing that people can't possibly be that way is like arguing that the sun can't possibly be bright, just look at it and you;ll see your wrong.

Where the fuck precisely did I say that "people can't possibly be that way", you sooty, blubbering corporate mouthpiece? If you'd taken the time to read what I wrote, you'd note that I said, "no sane person wants to give up the massive convenience of fossil fulels and easy trasportataion and undergo the social upheaval required to restructure Western civilization ...". There's a whole world of difference (aside from the fact that your claim is utterly unsubstantiated).

[Isana Kadeb]

I see this anus hair follicle has been reading Crichton's State of Fear. He's just yanked his entire thesis from that piece of trash.

[Covenant]

I see this anus hair follicle has been reading Crichton's State of Fear. He's just yanked his entire thesis from that piece of trash.

o rly?

Well, that would explain the very specific examplage without the, you know, backing of research required to find those sources. What's this 'State of Fear' about?

[Lord Zentei]

I see this anus hair follicle has been reading Crichton's State of Fear. He's just yanked his entire thesis from that piece of trash.

o rly?

Well, that would explain the very specific examplage without the, you know, backing of research required to find those sources. What's this 'State of Fear' about?

Here, a handy review: linka.

[Isana Kadeb]

That about sums it up. An annoyingly preachy, dull, substandard “thriller” with an asininely implausible plot and crude characters, clumsily overloaded with Crighton’s batty beliefs on global warming at every opportunity. The novel's really a pretext to disseminate his crackbrained thesis at the end. To conclude, its perfect for the top of your compost heap.

[Sikon]

That's the hard thing about finding a source that will commit to denying Global Warming, It's such a hot-button politicized issue that no one will commit to denying it, and yet if you bother to look their data things like the earth being warmer during the last four interglacial periods, and thickening antarctic ice, and climate unpredictability keep peaking through, covered by bullshit lawyer-speke like 'of course this is inconclusive fo the world as a whole' or 'this dataset doesn't cover global averages...' And of course, while you were all quick to pounce on the fallacies from the telegraph, I have yet to see response to the facts presented on the IPCC's mis-representation of the facts regarding global warming. Y'all are quick to pounce on me and my sources, slow to pounce on the facts presented within.

While my last post in this thread investigated the peak temperatures during past interglacial periods, let's now look into what you suggest about the Antarctic. The IPCC 2001 report shows 1976-2000 temperature trends (click to see larger picture):



They state: "A consistent, large-scale warming of both the land and ocean surface occurred over the last quarter of the 20th century, with largest temperature increases over the mid- and high latitudes of North America, Europe, and Asia. Large regions of cooling occurred only in parts of the Pacific and Southern Oceans and Antarctica."

In other words, cooling in some parts of Antarctica is what has been observed, but that doesn't change the overall trend of global warming, with average temperatures increasing, as illustrated graphically above. My recent post in the other thread illustrated some other complexities like some pollutants having a cooling effect, but that again doesn't change the big picture, not the direction of the net effect.

No more a conspiracy than <snip>

The radiative forcing effect of greenhouse gases is known, understood, and believed by people who are totally separate from Greenpeace-types. For example, those discussing how Mars could be warmed with terraforming by releasing CO2 with thermonuclear bombs like this are about as far from luddites as one gets. Another illustration is the article estimating the effect of various methods here, concluding just 40 gigawatts of nuclear power plants could produce enough chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to indirectly raise the temperature of the planet by 40 degrees Celsius.

My impression from your post is that you dislike the overall views of some parts of the environmental movement and associate concern about global warming with them. Definitely I could sympathize with disliking the anti-technology types. However, not every environmentalist and not every proponent of the importance of global warming has such a bias. The evidence for greenhouse gases causing global warming is a separate issue and still no less valid.

[Surlethe]

I love how ThatGuyFromThatPlace doesn't realize his absurd abortion of an argument's logic inevitably leads to the conclusion that evolution is wrong: if it's possible to dismiss a scientific theory because of incorrect scientific notions in the past, then evolution is just as wrong as global warming.