We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.
Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”
Read the whole letter… it’s only one page. Now get ready… start arguing.
Found by Misanthropic Scott on Cage Match.
#16 deowll,
I supported man made global warming until I found people with motives that reeked of self interest promoting schemes that would cost trillions and make them staggeringly rich while having no significant impact on the problem they were supposed to be addressing.
Please point out one or two of these fabulously rich scientists. I would love to think that one could get rich by doing something as fundamentally useful as scientific research instead of having so many good physicists and other scientists changing careers to become quants, where they can actually make money by providing nothing at all of value to society.
http://tinyurl.com/2wlemn
Then I looked at the data and found that the books were being cooked.
You wouldn’t have a link to some of this good hard evidence would you? Perhaps something a little more concrete than a single ambiguous quote taken out of context by an admitted computer thief with an agenda would be nice.
This was the Piltdown fraud on a vastly larger scale.
Piltdown man, as you clearly are not aware, was perpetrated by a single individual.
http://tinyurl.com/5q2o6d
You are suggesting that thousands of scientists, people accustomed to making a name for themselves by proving others wrong, are all in collusion to avoid making names for themselves by supporting the views of the thousands who came before them.
Is that correct?
bobbo,
Many of the climate scientists of the world are against cap and trade in favor of a nice simple revenue neutral carbon tax at the source. James Hansen is strongly in this list. Cap and trade is a much more complicated system than could really be effective as well as a way to make the profits go to Wall St.
A simple revenue neutral carbon tax would put the money back into the hands of the people who can afford an increase in prices the least. The tax should be charged at the source (oil well, coal mine, etc.) or the port of entry and should be given as a tax rebate to people earning below some amount with greater refunds at lower income levels.
Read the following link if you care about real solutions instead of ExxonMobil/Inhoffe propaganda.
http://tinyurl.com/5wulux
Or, go back to drinking corporate kool-aid and mistaking Al Gore for a scientist if you refuse to actually look at the evidence and then consider real solutions that just might allow us to survive the next century.
#19 – Maricopa,
How interesting the letter begs us not to attack the poor struggling scientists (who have been proven to lie to us)
Link please? What proof?
and then illustrate the article with the thoroughly discredited image of the polar bears stranded on an ice floe. Tch Tch Tch
We haven’t all paid attention to the propaganda. What photo? Was some photo used as actual scientific proof of global warming? Or, are you criticizing some non-scientific group or publication for the way they publicize the issue? What is the actual complaint on this?
I don’t care. I’ll be dead in thirty years….However, the politicians will make the last years of my life miserable due to their misguided efforts to “correct” the earth.
Excuse me, but has anyone noticed the Gulf of Mexico’s little oil spill problem, lately? I’m sure their was tons of science done to prove that very likely couldn’t happen. So safer, more expensive technology for preventing this problem, were circumvented. Now the cost of stopping it, and cleaning it all up, will far exceed what was saved, taking the cheaper way. And don’t expect BP to pick up the full cost. It couldn’t and no doubt won’t. And will be bailed out, just as other too big to fail entities have been. And expect BP to still make a huge profit this year, and hand out big bonuses to its executives. All this “science”. The science of forecasting dangers, calculating risk, manipulating profits, etc. Are a science that’s been corrupted to service the fewest, to make them the wealthiest. And science in other fields can just as easily be biased and corrupted to serve some agenda, that’s got little to do with factual evidence. It’s all subjective research, no matter how objective is the claim.
Science once held that Blacks were mentally inferior to Whites. There was no solid evidence to support this. Just some racist SOB, who skewed his “research” to prove his prejudice. And every other scientist took it for granted. Not bothering to question it, or confirm it, for some time. Probably because it made them feel good, that they were superior. And because they just didn’t give a damn to buck the conscience. Only many years later did anyone take a second look, and discover the obvious flaws in the data.
Thus many climate scientists may also be following flawed research, that they’re unwilling to contest or disprove. How can this research be held as totally flawless, from day one? And never questioned in the slightest, by a so-called majority? And still they claim the science is “self correcting”. I see little evidence of any “self correcting” taking place.
And lastly. It’s not just the assumption that “climate change” is taking place. And that humans are responsible, rather than it being a natural cycle. But also nothing in the way of a workable solution has been proven, in advance of wasting time and money on it. We’re just to trust doing an matter of things, will halt climate change. Sounds more like a fortune-teller’s con. It’s the “curse removal” swindle, only on a global scale.
So far, all the climate scientists complain about, is how hardly anyone beliefs them. Thus avoiding providing any effective solutions, that are proven will work. We’re just to throw money at them, until something appears to work.
Frigging wimpy, whiny, little geeks. What did they expect! Playing on the gullibility of John Q. Public, to sell a political posture, or a new treatment for hair loss. Screw ‘em, you go public with your opinions, you pay the price. Science sells, and we’ve about had it with half baked theories and conclusions. Unfortunately, a scientist needs money, so his conclusions always serve the purpose of those that finance, and John Q., he’s getting tired of being treated like he’s stupid.
Denialism, keep using it!
I absolutely love this quote! Smart people use this all the time and it just go nuts LMAO.
“But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.””
When you start to realize the other person is treating assumptions, theories and recent “findings” to be 100% factual, it’s time to just stfu and leave them be.
As I always say, leave the stupid alone as Einstein would! You’ll never get anything accomplish if you continue to surround yourself with them. All they can do is block your way, you just have to move around
>How interesting the letter begs us not to attack the poor struggling scientists (who have been proven to lie to us)
You can start with Michael Mann’s lies to the NAS Panel. He told them that he didn’t calculate an r2 statistic, said “That would be silly and incorrect reasoning,” even though his own graphs showed that he had calculated the statistic.
Just looking at Mann you can find many more, including ‘hide the decline,’ but you have said in the past you are not interested in his math calculations.
TheOne–do you consider gravity being the force of attraction between/among objects as a “fact” we can all rely on or do you have any other theories to present such as angels pushing?
There is one, and only one, correct answer to this question that will remain but a quibble.
#25 – Glenn E.,
Excuse me, but has anyone noticed the Gulf of Mexico’s little oil spill problem, lately? I’m sure their was tons of science done to prove that very likely couldn’t happen.
You seem to be confusing unbiased research science with engineering paid for by oil companies.
Thus many climate scientists may also be following flawed research, that they’re unwilling to contest or disprove. How can this research be held as totally flawless, from day one? And never questioned in the slightest, by a so-called majority? And still they claim the science is “self correcting”. I see little evidence of any “self correcting” taking place.
Well, your second mistake (after your confusion of engineering and science) is to assume that climate science stating that there was global warming was always mainstream from day one.
It wasn’t.
They had a difficult job making the case. It took years once people bothered to even take the proposition seriously. So, I’m not even counting the time from 1901 when the greenhouse effect was first noticed and ignored.
http://tinyurl.com/ybc55h9
Your third mistake is to assume that humans can and should act only on 100% certainties. By this standard, there is no reason to take any precautions against terrorism, drunk driving, smoking, or high cholesterol, none of which have anything close to a guarantee of killing you.
In fact, even if your cholesterol is 300 or if you drive drunk, or smoke heavily, the odds that one of these will kill you is probably much lower than the odds that catastrophic warming is coming our way if we do not take action.
And lastly. It’s not just the assumption that “climate change” is taking place. And that humans are responsible, rather than it being a natural cycle. But also nothing in the way of a workable solution has been proven, in advance of wasting time and money on it.
Well, forgetting about the fact that you don’t know the meaning of the word lastly, let’s take your point about assumption. It is not an assumption at all. It is the conclusion of vast quantities of data that you have clearly not paid any attention to and yet feel qualified to judge.
Here are a couple of good links that, if you actually are willing to read the proof, will make a good start.
This one is from those NASA multi-billionaire scientists.
http://tinyurl.com/yhsnaz8
And this one is the executive summary with links to the full data footnoted with hundreds of peer reviewed papers for the lead up to Copenhagen.
http://tinyurl.com/2baacqp
If you really do care so much about the issue, it behooves you to at least read the data and know the issues instead of getting all of your so-called data from Faux Spews.
Bobbo, Lomborg isn’t comparing solutions to global warming, but rather the costs and benefits of solutions to global warming versus other environmental problems, and concludes the money is better spent on other things. Developing countries said roughly the same thing in the last decade, asking for money for drinking water systems.
Total emissions for US + Japan + Russia + EU + Canada + S Korea is 47.7% of world emissions in 2006. This number is shrinking each year, as the developing world develops. So a carbon tax that is not adopted by those developing countries has little effect.
#28 – MikeN,
I’m not really sure who you’re addressing in this post, possibly me. Would you please provide links. I don’t ask you to google to make my point. Show me the same courtesy please.
#31 – MikeN,
Bobbo, Lomborg isn’t comparing solutions to global warming, but rather the costs and benefits of solutions to global warming versus other environmental problems, and concludes the money is better spent on other things. Developing countries said roughly the same thing in the last decade, asking for money for drinking water systems.
Of course, to make such comparison, one must first ignore the fact that global warming is the cause of a severe reduction in drinking water. Lakes are drying up. The cryosphere is melting. One can’t adequately address a symptom and ignore the cause.
#32 – MikeN,
Total emissions for US + Japan + Russia + EU + Canada + S Korea is 47.7% of world emissions in 2006. This number is shrinking each year, as the developing world develops. So a carbon tax that is not adopted by those developing countries has little effect.
And yet, the developing world has been avoiding the carbon tax by stating that the world’s largest polluter, the U.S. is doing nothing. (Yes, I realize that technically China is producing more CO2 than the U.S. these days, but A) not per capita and B) about a third of their carbon footprint is to produce the goods that we consume, so is really just an offshoring of our own CO2 and should be credited to us.
#27 – The0ne,
Bobbo already torpedoed you quite effectively and succinctly on this post. However, I won’t let that stop me from adding my $0.02.
“But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.””
Yes. This includes facts such as evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics, among our strongest and most tried and proven theories.
When you start to realize the other person is treating assumptions, theories and recent “findings” to be 100% factual, it’s time to just stfu and leave them be.
That 100% is your addition. It is not in the text of the letter. Do you consider it a fact that smoking causes cancer? Do you consider it a fact that drunk driving kills people? These are no better established than global warming at this point. In fact, many smokers do not die of cancer. Many drunk drivers make it home at night to do it again.
As I always say, leave the stupid alone as Einstein would!
What exactly are you talking about here? You knew Einstein personally? What publicly known fact about Einstein are you citing? When Einstein disagreed with people, he stood up and said so, as when he made his mistake regarding quantum mechanics.
Scott–you are doing all the work here. I am happy to watch though.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen MikeN use a link. He can’t think up his Luddite nonsense all on his own. I guess he is just stingy with his precious knowledge base.
Don’t get me wrong, Mikey also has contributed a few good ideas from time to time and he keeps his posts short.
Still Mike: wouldn’t you benefit YOURSELF by just a little bit more effort??? Do any of the links you actually use actually contain arguments against your posted positions and therefore you don’t provide the links? Or what other reasons do you have to so uniformly report from the far right?
I think Lomborg has “many” ideas, and I wouldn’t pigeon hole him to the 2-3 you have come across. I like him not because I think he is right, though he may well be, but because he was the first “alternative thinker” that addressed the “real” issue==how to best respond to GW issues.
Too many, including most here, confuse the issue of causation with the issue of solutions. Related–but not the same thing.
#29 – bobbo, are we Men of Science, or Devo?
TheOne–do you consider gravity being the force of attraction between/among objects as a “fact” we can all rely on or do you have any other theories to present such as angels pushing?
There is one, and only one, correct answer to this question that will remain but a quibble.
Excellent torpedo, as previously noted. I would just point out a minor correction though. We understand global warming far better than gravity. Unlike gravity, we have quite a good understanding of the cause of global warming. We know that high energy photons from the sun cruise right through our CO2 blanket. We know that low energy infrared photons are sometimes blocked by the CO2 blanket and thus stay on the planet rather than radiating back into space.
Our predictions from that knowledge are less precise than with gravity, however. Will the earth warm 2 degrees if we stop emitting CO2 today, or might it be either 1.9 or 2.1? Will we have 5 degrees or 6 of global warming if we continue with business as usual? What will the local effects be for New York City or any other locale on the planet? Which parts of the globe will warm by exactly how much?
These are tough questions. We know that the globe has already warmed by about a degree. We know we are committed to 10 more years of warming just because there is a 10 year lag in the effect of rising CO2. We know that the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than any predictions we made. We know that the gulf stream is already 30% slower. We know that the ocean is already less oxygenated than it was. We know that the clathrates on the north slopes of Alaska and Siberia are already releasing methane, which could well be a tipping point.
But, exact predictions are harder to make for the complex systems involved in global warming than they are for the simple system of a few massive objects attracting each other in space.
On the other hand, we think there is probably a graviton that causes the attraction of massive bodies but have never observed one and don’t know its properties. We can make incredibly accurate predictions based on gravity. But, we don’t really know the cause.
So, gravity makes for an interesting comparison with global warming.
Scott–I would make the exact opposite point you do. Seems to me that facts and understanding have all to do with pragmatism/usefulness/predictability/replication and such. From that viewpoint, gravity is totally known and GW an unknown.
So, does “knowing” something, its factualness, go to its reliable functionality or its whyness? Seems to me you are substituting a non-scientific question with the scientific one. Purely definitional though and I pose it knowing it will take Mike a few days to cough up a link.
And thats epistemology. A too little utilized past time.
bobbo,
I hate to say it, but you too are confusing scientific research with engineering.
String Hypothesis (I’m not yet willing to call it a theory in the scientific sense, personally) and Loop Quantum Gravity are attempts to explain gravity. We don’t have a theory of gravity. We have an observable and highly reproducible fact. We don’t really have an explanation yet. All other known forces have particles associated with them.
Global warming is not at all unknown.
We know exactly why it’s happening. And we can quantify the results. What we have is merely a lack of precision in our predictions. We don’t know whether the safe level of CO2 is 350PPM or 330PPM or 280PPM. What we do know is that it is NOT 450PPM or even the current level of 387PPM.
With gravity, we have tons of precision, so to speak, but no explanation at all. The best we have at the moment is that massive objects warp space. However, with all other forces having specific particles for transmission, and with quantum mechanics asserting that there is a particle, I don’t really know if we can claim to have a theory of gravity.
Perhaps we should default to the theory of intelligent falling. But, I wouldn’t.
http://tinyurl.com/y9k733g
The Virginia Governor doesn’t believe in science, nor anything else that will deprive him of his non-Christian agenda. And by non-Christian I mean anything that he does since he is seeking to hurt people by stripping them of their inalienable rights, persecuting them, defund government and not ever raise taxes to those that can easily afford the tiny splash in their sea of money (read rich people and corporations) but rather reduce the money they would owe any sane government.