Cold on Global Warming

In London's Sunday Telegraph, Bjorn Lomborg writes that global warming is the moral test of our time, but not quite in the way you had imagined. If it's triage time, then there are far more urgent priorities.

Comments

[The White Anglo Saxon Protesta]

This is the most cogent, plain-spoken and brief analysis of both climate change and world priorities I've read in a long time. I love this guy.

Having said that, I am not sure he isn't saying we need to simply replace the Kyoto Protocol with other collectivist approaches to problems of individual nations and peoples.

[Ron Hardin]

Doing good doesn't have such a great history once it's organized. The right decision is disband and go back to what you were doing before it came up.

Any number of perverse effects wipe out any actual good-doing that isn't personal good-doing and hard work requiring some deep knowledge or other ; and mostly having done good shows up only retroactively if at all. It's not obvious at the time. It's more of a muddle in the present.

[Warren]

Fortunately we know that Lomborg is objectively dishonest and clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice. So we can safely ignor him.

[The White Anglo Saxon Protesta]

Warren - How, exactly, do "we" know that?

[Warren]

TWASPB,
I don't recall exactly which one it was, but some independent, unbiased, and official board of scientific gatekeepers said so.

[The White Anglo Saxon Protesta]

LOL, yeah, thank God for those right-thinking pscientists.

[wellfellow]

"pscientists", I love it!

Here,

http://www.reason.com/0205/fe.rb.green.shtml

[pragmatist]

But how exactly do we "know" that "global warming is real"? The earth has gone through periodic temperature swings and climate changes over a several thousand year cycles. Chinese civilization began, for example, in the north China plains, based on wheat. Today you'd have a hard time growing wheat there the way they did back then. It's too cold there now (see, it *used* to be warmer, before there was *any* industrialization).

I don't concede yet that we even "know" there's any problem at all. Anybody know of any scientifically solid evidence to the contrary? I mean something other than temperature measurements that span a few decades (compared to a 2500 year cycle), or hoakie "climate models" that leave out so much realistic atmospheric behavior that we should put zero stock in their predictions.

[joe]

"Global warming is real and caused by CO2."

Yup.

"The trouble is that the climate models show we can do very little about the warming. Even if everyone (including the United States) did Kyoto and stuck to it throughout the century, the change would be almost immeasurable, postponing warming by just six years in 2100."

This is the equivalent of saying, "Even if the Wright Brothers build 100 of their flyers, air travel won't make a dent in the demand for trains." Achieving the Kyoto levels will require a "priming" investment in new technologies and practices that, once implemented, will allow much greater improvements to be achieved at much lower unit costs. Sort of like, the first pill costs $200 million, the second one costs 11 cents.

Lomborg's argument about people in the developing world being richer in the future has a logic problem - the expected economic growth is likely to occur, if impending environmental disruptions make those areas bad investments.

I've got to admire his central points, though - it is a moral necessity that we get the most bang for our environmental-protection buck.

[joe]

pragmatist, where did you get your doctorate in climatology? I don't know nearly enough about the science to make a useful judgement about the reliability of any models, and I don't believe you do, either. I defer my judgement to authorities on the subject. Any search for evidence by someone as uneducated on the subject as myseld, or you I suspect, is worthless.

[drf]

Waspy single dude and warren:

the objective group is danish, and it's the most advanced group of collective people on the planet. you see, their education is the best in the world. their busses are the best in the world. THEY are the best in the world.

if THEY disagree with you, then YOU'RE wrong. you're just too uneducated for to know.

this is the society that indoctrinates its people stronger and better-organized than the others.

remember, the newspaper "information" had a "kkk member as a cultural minister in the [newt] gingrich government" and placed the sudetenland in switzerland. and the state-run text tv had "52" states in the us and questioned me when i called in to correct him.

so, they're right. you're wrong.

that is all.

[drf]

"I defer my judgement to authorities on the subject"

-- dude, you're in for lots of contradictory information. this is a toughie.

cheers,
drf

[Twba]

Global warming will be seen as a net positive in 100 years. With a longer growing season, Canada and Siberia will feed the world. Scuba divers will explore the coral reef that was once Rush Limbaugh's estate. Santa will install air conditioning in the elven workshops.

[pragmatist]

joe,

In fact I do have a doctorate, not in atmospheric sciece but in engineering, and I know quite a bit about fluid dynamics (huge chunck of the climate models), plus combustion chemistry, and chemistry in general. I was friends with climatologist PhD students, we talked about the assumptions they were making in their models (gross, to put it mildly).

I know enough to say that the climate models they're using are a long way from being science as I'd define science.

Environmentalists get away with their agendas because, sadly, too few people are technically/scientifically literate enough to know when to question their assertions.
And too many PhD's in modern "science" are getting all their funding from gov't agencies, who want to hear "the sky is falling" (I've seen this phenomenon first hand).

[joe]

Twba, the point is not that a world with the temperatures and weahter patterns of the early 20th century is the eternal ideal, but that the disruption created by a dramatic change will be harmful.

[Lowdog]

Sorry joe, but pragmatist is right. I'm not a climatologist, either, but it wouldn't take much searching to find that: "Climate research is made difficult by the large scale, long time periods, and complex processes which govern climate. It is generally accepted that climate is governed by differential equations based on physical laws, but what, exactly, are these equations, and what can be concluded from them, is still subject to debate. Climate is sometimes modeled as a stochastic process but this is generally accepted as a approximation to processes that are otherwise too complicated to analyze."

So if that means that, with certainty, anyone can say they "know" that "global warming is real", and even further, that it's caused by CO2, they are wrong.

[pragmatist]

PS: know what *the* single biggest "greenhouse" gas is? Water vapor.

I know that only a couple year back, they still were largely leaving H2O vapor out of their models. Why? Because the absorption & emission spectra are way complex to model mathematically.

Don't be fooled by the power of modern computers. There's tons of things in the real world that our computers are not yet fast & sophisticated enough to model realistically. Computer models should be taken skeptically, with the old "garbage in, garbage out" adage in the back of your mind.

[Twba]

joe,

An increase of one degree celsius is hardly a dramatic change. Suppression of freedom in an absurd attempt to maintain the present temperature is too dramatic. How much disruption do you anticipate if the average global temp is rising very slowly?

[Rich]

Lomborg is not a libertarian. He's your basic
liberal, big gov't kind of guy. But he does
look at environmental issues objectively, rather
than in the irrational way most
"environmentalists" do.

His book is well worth reading.

[Warren]

This is the equivalent of saying, "Even if the Wright Brothers build 100 of their flyers, air travel won't make a dent in the demand for trains."

This isn't even close to serving as an appropriate analogy. First of all, the airplane wasn't developed to relieve our dependence on rail. It was developed because, "Dude! He's fucking flying! He's really flying!" and everybody immediately knew it would be a huge success. (Incidentally the Wrights efforts to enforce their patent left one of them dead, the other emotionally broken, and their invention in the public domain).
Kyoto by contrast is a pure destroyer of wealth. There is no profit in it. Worse than that, it is antithetical to it's stated purpose. What developing countries need are property rights. As Ronald Bailey recently pointed out, prosperity is by far the superior method of dealing with environmental challenges.

[joe]

Of course there are gaps in knowledge about future warming trends, just as there are gaps in the fossil record. Nonetheless, the greenhouse model and the evolution are broadly supported within their respective fields, because they effectively describe all available data. If the state of the scientific consensus changes, that will be good enough for me, but the challenges made to that consensus are a little too close to "carbon dating isn't an exact science" to effectively cast doubt on the central thesis of global warming.

"An increase of one degree celsius is hardly a dramatic change." An increase of one degree celsius across the entire globe represents a significant increase in the total amount of energy being cycled through the dynamic system known as the atmosphere. A one degree change does not mean the weather is otherwise exactly the same, but 1 degree higher. It means that much more heat is melting ice, that much more energy is causing air to rise that much faster, that much more water is evaporated. If this was about 25 degree celsius days becoming 26 degree celsius days, nobody would be worried.

If an America that developed to handle 10% more serious storms was extant, then 10% more serious storms wouldn't be a problem. The problem is, the society, economy, built environment, etc. grew up to handle a certain amount of storm activity, and subjecting it to more than that will overwork the system. Ditto with the ecology.

[joe]

Warren, there are cetainly no shortage of good ideas for how to address environmental problems. The first step is admitting you have a problem. And while property rights are certainly a good thing for the developing world, you're veering awfully close to magic bullet territory.

Also, nothing you wrote about the Wright Brothers analogy shows that it doesn't apply here. The initial steps taken in any technology come with enormous costs, and produce low benefits. But these initial steps open the door to much greater benefits, and lower cost.

[xray]

http://www.realclimate.org/

[Twba]

The temp is rising slowly. We have plenty of time to modify buildings to withstand more rainfall.

We could place large sunscreens in orbit and reduce energy input while still increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Monkeys could fly out of my butt.

[joe]

You don't think "huge sunscreens in orbit" would come with a few negative consequences of their own?

How are we to modify coastal areas and Pacific Islands?

And why would modifying the foundations of skyscrapers to accommodate higher water tables be superior to modifying them to reduce their HVAC needs?

[Jason Ligon]

"Also, nothing you wrote about the Wright Brothers analogy shows that it doesn't apply here. The initial steps taken in any technology come with enormous costs, and produce low benefits."

And every investment in any technology comes with an opportunity cost. The trick is to figure out if dedicating billions for no measurable impact over a hundred year span is worth it, even if the 500 year pay off is pretty big.

The other trick is choosing the right methodology for making rational investment decisions. The locals, myself included, are skeptical that you will do much but waste money that would otherwise be productively invested if you hand it over as a mandated tax.

[The White Anglo Saxon Protesta]

Okay, folks, back up and read this thread from top to bottom. This sort of back-and-forth hype is exactly why this particular topic is such a tough nut to crack.

I am biased to place some faith in the global warming idea because altering his environment to suit is what Man does best. It is his means of survival, along with reasonably adapting to that which he can't actively alter.

Having said that, it is not a *scientific* judgement that must be made vis a vis global warming or climate change, it is a *values* judgement.

To the extent that climate change poses an iminent threat to the species, it should be combated. To the extent that there may be benefits to the species in heating up the place a little, simply coping with whatever drawbacks there may be may be the most rational strategy.

[pragmatist]

x-ray -- interesting website, I took a brief look and will look a little more at it later. But off the top, I'm not willing to concede to a statistical analysis of the peer reviewed literature. Why? Because I know the agenda of those who've funded the research.

A nearby subject is the CFC refrigerant ban. Survey the lit over the last decade and you'll be hard pressed to find dissention. But I know something else -- volcanoes inject natural CFC's straight into the ozone layer. One volcanoe can dump more CFC's up there than man has ever produced, and it's gone on for millions of years. Yet the world hasn't end, and yet, the literature says it will.

[Warren]

But these initial steps open the door to much greater benefits, and lower cost.

I call bullshit. "These initial steps" are all cost and no benefits. Also, there is no credible evidence that global warming actually does represent a "problem". I recommend this.

Oh and do you really need it spelled out how massive amounts of time energy and money were instantly invested the Wright brothers invention, while all support for Kyoto is rhetorical because no economy on earth could actually afford to implement it. Your assertion that it will pay off later has no basis in reality. (apologies for redundancy)

[pragmatist]

waspb -- Good point, there's value judgements involved. And man may well be impacting the world temperature, though it isn't clear to me that man is the dominant impact.

So I revert to the well known fact that the earth was decidedly warmer when man's recorded history began. Result? A lot more moisture and temperate climate, further north. Homo sapiens thrived.

I'm still hard pressed to believe that a 1 C temperature increase is going to do us in. Or even that it's going to slow us down very much.

[Rikurzhen]

pragmatist, if you've got this all figured out, why haven't you published your analysis?

[old fart]

I don't understand why I should care about global warming. Even if the worst happens in 100 years, I live in a country that I think will emerge victorious from the famine wars.

I understand the concept of "all men are brothers" but I care more what happenes to the brotherly men in my hometown than my brotherly men on other continents.

Will someone give me a good reason to be concerned about people who live in places near sea level in other continents besides one based on religion?

[bs]

"volcanoes inject natural CFC's straight into the ozone layer. One volcanoe can dump more CFC's up there than man has ever produced, and it's gone on for millions of years. Yet the world hasn't end, and yet, the literature says it will"

hmm, sure they do.
No this is just wrong - volcanos don't emit CFC's at all.
Volcanic emissions can however contribute to ozone depletion, in an indirect way, largely by interacting with CFC's that are already in the atmosphere and making the ozone depletion effect worse. A quick google search will produce dozen of articles on this effect - this is a good one:

http://earthbulletin.amnh.org/D/3/3/index.html

[Lowdog]

Sorry we keep locking horns so much lately, joe, but you tell pragmatist we can't trust uneducated people on the subject and then go on to tell twba why he's wrong.

I agree with wasp that a lot of "he said, she said" stuff doesn't get us far. That's why my only point to make is that climate science is very inexact due to all the factors involved, so why risk so much?

As I posted a couple days ago, meteorologists can't even predict weather from day to day in a local area, who in the hell can predict long term trends across the whole damn planet??

[Twba]

A volcamo emits HCl which does break down ozone.

[Dynamist]

By simply accepting the premise that warming exists, Lomborg shifts the argument to areas that seem more important to me, too. Grant that Chicken Little is right, then assert that none of the present solutions to hold up the sky make sense, because the cost of holding it up is more than the benefit.

Then, rather than bicker about whether the sky is falling, point out all the demonstrable immediate beneficial changes a collecitvist Chicken Little could make that seem to payoff more than their price.

Even joe accepts the cost-foolishness of climate bickering, then he goes on to bicker anyway. We're all stuck in proving our minds right over actually helping people who are suffering now. It's fun to rehash the climate arguments (until thoreau has time to finally settle it), but Lomborg's point, to me, is that there are better things to do in the Ivory Towers and on the third-world dirt.

[fyodor]

Will someone give me a good reason to be concerned about people who live in places near sea level in other continents besides one based on religion?

You're not an asshole?

Ultimately what you care about is up to you. I can't tell you why to care about something that has no material benefit for you. But some of us do.

That said, I could point out that we might expect a little more cooperation from rest of the world if we show some concern for it, just as you might justify helping neighbors because they might help you out someday. And just as you might care about people you come in contact with, you might someday have your heartstrings pulled by pictures in the paper or on TV. Ya never know.

[The White Anglo Saxon Protesta]

fyodor - "Ultimately what you care about is up to you. I can't tell you why to care about something that has no material benefit for you. But some of us do.

That said, I could point out that we might expect a little more cooperation from rest of the world if we show some concern for it, just as you might justify helping neighbors because they might help you out someday."

What makes you think global altruism is why nations have signed on to Kyoto? It couldn't be because developing nations find this a convenient blade to jab at industrial nations, could it? Or, that by guilt-tripping nations like the US and making exceptions for others, like China, they hope to alter the balance of power not by merit but by fiat?

No... of course not. Virtue clearly lies almost everywhere except the rapacious, hyper-productive U.S.

[gaius marius]

the problem with global warming is this:

Of course there are gaps in knowledge about future warming trends, just as there are gaps in the fossil record. Nonetheless, the greenhouse model and the evolution are broadly supported within their respective fields, because they effectively describe all available data. If the state of the scientific consensus changes, that will be good enough for me, but the challenges made to that consensus are a little too close to "carbon dating isn't an exact science" to effectively cast doubt on the central thesis of global warming.

mr joe, i don't doubt -- and no one can -- the central hypothesis. it would happen -- on a benchtop, in a controlled experiment.

the problem is that the actual, hypercomplex system has NOTHING to do with this irrelevantly superreductive model.

there has to be an acknowledgement here of the limitations of science as practiced by humans. for modeling to mean anything at all, it must *closely* approximate the system involved. humanity is not capable of this now, or perhaps ever, with a system as complex as global weather.

all claims to the contrary are not scientific method, but "scientism" -- the religion of modern science as an explanation of everything. i would submit that scientism has infected most of the people we call scientists, and leads them to believe that their powers of explanation are far greater than they really are. what is truly knowable to scientific method is really very small in the grand scheme; few seem willing to acknowledge this fact.

as a chemical engineer, i can reasonably model a distillation column. i cannot -- and no one now can -- effectively model the planet. there are vast sums of knowledge that are simply not understood, and much not yet even conceived of. the attempt is noble and will hopefully be groundwork for future study; but to take action on current modelling is no different than making policy decisions based on aquinas.

i'm sorry if that fundamental truth about the limitation of science explodes soem dearly-held book-of-revelations mythology that now pervades the global warming debate, but that debate exposes far more about human psychology than global ecosystems, imo.

[gaius marius]

perhaps to further justify my skepticism, the data plainly isn't solid. part of this is the metric they're trying to measure -- "global temperature" is such a ridiculously abstracted statistic that it barely can have meaning, much less consistency.

[Old Fart]

So if someone doesn't agree with your globalist view of the world you'll call them names? Great arguement!

Oh no, someone called me an asshole!!! If it will save me and this country tax money you can call me anything you want.

In my lifetime, and for many decades before, no country has come to the "aid" of the US. I would think besides sending us their smartest to keep this place running, what else are they good for?

Does anyone on this board think there is an issue likely to arise in the next 20 years that will require the US to really cooperate with other counteries in the world (besides bribing them as we're doing in the war on terror)? I mean real cooperation, ala WW2 and not just letting a country sit at a table with us to give them a does of self esteem?

[fyodor]

Old Fart,

In the larger context of my entire post, my "name calling" is clearly not so puerile. My point is that while there's a pragmatic side to morality, there's also a side that is, for lacking of a better word, transcendent. Ie, you're moral simply because your are. It works for you. You believe in it, for whatever reason. On that basis I recognize that I can't move you.

But one reason morality often works for us, is that it gets reciprocated.

Now, pragmatic matters are usually the most important in world affairs. But would our alliance with Britain have worked as well if we hadn't trusted each other? Well, we allied with Stalin too. But then, some have said that was a mistake, despite the expedient reasons at the time.

Anyway, there's no clear either/or in such matters. What's even less clear is how we could predict what cooperation we might need in the future, especially if you already dismiss the example of terrorism! Sounds like you've already made up your mind and are asking the question merely to try to prove yourself right. So all I can tell you is, as I said already, I can't tell you what to care about, but ya never know what the future holds. I take caring about others as a good in itself which can't help but have valuable residuals, as long as we keep caring in perspective along with pragmatic matters. Beyond that, there really is no rational argument to be made. Suit yourself.

[gaius marius]

pragmatist, if you've got this all figured out, why haven't you published your analysis?

mr rikurzhen, wadr, the burden of proof isn't on mr pragmatist, who serves an *essential* scientific role as a skeptic. it is on the proposition.

and the propositon needs much, much more study before anything conclusive can be rationally said about it. forget drawing conclusions -- we're still having difficulty *defining the system*. the scientific study of climate is plainly still far too embryonic to be capable of reasonably concluding most of the things some more histrionic environmentalists believe to be god's revealed truth.

[Twba]

Old Fart,

You have many barstool philosophers on your side. So long as the SS checks and Bud draught keep flowing, who cares about the rest of the world? I am not worried about sea level because Antarctica a few degrees warmer will still be colder than a witch's tit. The ice will increase due to more evaporation and precipitation. Fear not the global warming.

[gaius marius]

Does anyone on this board think there is an issue likely to arise in the next 20 years that will require the US to really cooperate with other counteries in the world (besides bribing them as we're doing in the war on terror)?

do you possess a crystal ball, mr fart? neither do i. the best either of us can say is that the probability exists.

but i'm aghast at the nihilistic antisocial undercurrent of your comments. why not kill all your neighbors, if they're of no use to you now?

[wellfellow]

Gaius,

I believe Mr. Fart is only trolling. His comments strike me as a bit too much to be serious.

[Twba]

Mr. Fart is Old Fart's father.

[fyodor]

wellfellow,

Ack, you're likely right!! Meaning, I been trolled!!! Well, it was an interesting intellectual exercise, anyway. Why anyone should ever care about anything not of tangible benefit to oneself has always been an interesting subject to me, as well as to my namesake, Dostoevsky!

[wellfellow]

Fyodor,

I must say, your namesake is one of the greatest. I'd wager Mr. Fart wouldn't appreciate Dostoyevsky's reasoning, though, it being religious and all.

Ah, that crazy old coot, Dostoyevsky!

[fyodor]

wellfellow,

Yes, ol' Dosty was religious at the end of the day, but no normal Christian was he as he admitted that as a rational matter religion/Christianity didn't much make sense! Thus, the existential leap! (Although it was Kierkegaard who actually used that term...)

[joe]

All of this skepicism towards government funded scientists is amusing, in light of the fact that almost all of the opposition is being funded by industry and political groups. Yet that doesn't seem to make them any less credible in the eyes of the Deniers.

gaius, while scientific inquiry certainly has its limits, it's the best we've got for understanding and measuring natural phenomenon. You go with your certainty that no studies that support global warming could possibly be right, I'll continue to respect the opinion of the overwhelming majority of people who know enough about the subject to warrant attention.

WASPB, you explain reasons why the countries that express concern about global warming are self-serving. As the largest contributor of greenhouse gasses, the US certainly has a self-serving reason to deny the climate change is happening. Let's leave the speculations about motives aside, and answer the question via the scientific method, mm-kay?

"As I posted a couple days ago, meteorologists can't even predict weather from day to day in a local area, who in the hell can predict long term trends across the whole damn planet??" Long term trends are much easier to predict than single data points. I am much more comfortable predicting that the Patriots will have a winning record over the next three seasons, than predicting what their record will be against the NFC.

[joe]

Actually, it would be better to say, "...than predicting whether they'll win the season openner in 2003."

I'm pretty confident predicting that they'll have a good record against the NFC.

[joe]

Ah, shit, 2006, you know what I mean.

[Gary Gunnels]

Regarding "caring" about other people's problems:

IF rapid human-caused climate change is occurring, and this, for example, buries island nations underwater, then I think it would be appropriate to go after those nations which were behind these changes and charge them for the loss either in kind (land for land) or monetarily. This seems like a basic libertarian principle in my mind; you cause harm to another's property, then you as the tortfeasor ought to compensate the property owner.

______________________

RE: Lomborg:

He was "acquitted" by an equally august body of scientists.

______________________

Twba,

IF rapid human-caused climate change is occurring, it will come with a mixture of benefits and losses; what that mixture would be is hard to determine, but I wouldn't have a pollyannish view about the matter.

[wellfellow]

Fyodor,

Kierkegaard, Dosty, unusual Christians. Maybe there needs to be more like them.

[drf]

hey joe!

while the us creating the most greenhouse gasses may indicate the desire to deny any dangers from such gasses or human-induced global warming. However, on the other hand, there is also an argument for the pro kyoto europeans to squelch the us economy. remember that europe gets the credits based on the shrunken (former) ussr economy. with all of the power games, especially augmented by the hatred towards current us policies, you can see that happening. hell, look at the games in the un that the us and europeans play.

both sides may very well have reason to try to fudge to forward an interest: look at the attackers and defenders of good ol bj?rn.

and while you're working on predicting the pats for the next few years, i'll still be lamely reliving january 1986... sigh.

cheers,
drf

[Twba]

Climate change is occurring slowly not rapidly. We have plenty of time to move to higher ground.

[joe]

fyodor, how would a property owner sue every single consumer of fossil fuels on earth, and how would the court break down each defendant's share of the award? This is a collective problem, which requires a collective result. No wonder libertarians want so desperately to pretend it doesn't exist.

Yes, there are self-serving arguments on all sides. Fuck em all.

drf, go Shuffle off to the Fridge. How's that Series win coming? I keed, I keed.

[Rikurzhen]

mr rikurzhen, wadr, the burden of proof isn't on mr pragmatist, who serves an *essential* scientific role as a skeptic. it is on the proposition.

when a majority of scientists agree on something and non-experts disagree with them, the burden of proof is pretty clearly on the group going against the consensus.

[gaius marius]

gaius, while scientific inquiry certainly has its limits, it's the best we've got for understanding and measuring natural phenomenon.

i agree, mr joe, when it is judiciously applied. when it is not, it is misleading -- especially to the faithful of scientism.

You go with your certainty that no studies that support global warming could possibly be right,

lol -- this of course is a wanton misrepresentation of what i said.

this is not hard. allow me to analogize: evolution is evident -- we can see it act microbially, we have vast sums of evidence demonstrating it. yet the mechanism of evolution is still incompletely understood and theoretical. it exists. yet how it works is unknown.

in climatology, not only do we not have a solid (or even limited) theoretical understanding of the mechanism -- we still don't have conclusive evidence to demonstrate the event.

what we have is laboratory analysis that demonstrates the *possibility* -- that simple atmospheric warming can happen -- and with that any sensible person must agree, as there is much evidence for acivilizational climate change.

as such, believing the predictions of climatology as currently understood is rather like believing in the predictions of the atomism of gassendi, or lamarck's transformism.

and you would wish to make massive civilizational changes based upon this?

I'll continue to respect the opinion of the overwhelming majority of people who know enough about the subject to warrant attention.

and i'll respect their opinions as well, mr joe, to the extent that they can evidence them -- but not blindly.

i must say that i'm dismayed but unsurprised at unskeptical adoption on faith. scientism is an affliction that runs rampant these days.

[gaius marius]

when a majority of scientists agree on something and non-experts disagree with them, the burden of proof is pretty clearly on the group going against the consensus.

spoken like a politician, mr rikurzhen, but not a scientist.

[Gary Gunnels]

Twba,

Your claim is as unknowable (at this point) as is the claim that we are under a rapid change scenario.

________________________

What truly amazes is simply how "ignorant" both sides of the debate are, but how they try to ply the ignorance of either side into some sort of firm position for themselves.

If rapid climate change is a "religion" for some environmentalists, then slow or no climate change is a "religion" for those who oppose that variety of environmentalists.

[Rikurzhen]

gaius, show me a non-global warming circumstance where your principle and not mine would apply.

[drf]

shuffling away! isn't that sad? but this will always be a bears town. awesome! first round on me! nice! 🙂

back to the self-serving idiots on both sides that actually block debate (see JB's comments for similar vein): there was some movie with the drill sargent from full metal jacket where that actor's character is in jail giving some comrades on the outside some advice: "you gotta kill 'em! you GOTTA kill 'em!"

cheers!
drf

[drf]

...um that would be GG's comments (sorry about that)

[joe]

"in climatology, not only do we not have a solid (or even limited) theoretical understanding of the mechanism -- we still don't have conclusive evidence to demonstrate the event."

Au contraire! (See how I used French there? Now all the readers will be on my side!)

Evolution is precisely the right analogy for climate change science. We know evolution happened. The fossil record provides ample evidence. However, we don't know exactly what the mechanism is. The gradualism of Darwinian mutation/competition doesn't explain the periods of swift change, followed by long periods of relative stasis. And there are still gaps in the fossil record. Similarly, we know for certain that CO2 levels are higher than they've been for a long time. We know that 8 of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past decade. We know that storms are more frequent and severe. We know that certain aquatic habitats are becoming warmer, and that some of the species therein are less successful. We know that other species are acclimating to areas that were formerly out of their range. We have a good explanation for this - global warming is causing changes in the functioning of the atmosphere and ocean. But we don't know exactly how these changes will manifest themselves. Because of this, people determined not the believe what the evidence tells us attempt to poke holes in the theory. Yet since they can't produce a reliable counter-theory, they've adopted an entirely negative stance, one that relieves them of any burden of proving their case. Hey, say the Intelligent Designers and the Global Warming Deniers, we're just saying, keep an open mind. You can't say you know for certain, so it would be inappropriate to base policymaking/biology education on your theory.

You are correct, we can't know whether the model that predicts more rain in Arizona is better than the model that predicts less rain. We can't know whether the additional cold water from the melting ice caps, and the warmer equiteorial water from the heated southern seas, will push the Gulf Stream this way or that. Weather is a choatic system, and predicting what will happen when is an inexact science. But what we do know about chaotic systems is that when you up the amount of energy you put into them, there are more violent swings.

[SixSigma]

Joe -

No one is saying these problems "don't" exist, simply saying your principle that they do - can't be proven to anyone's concept of reasonble. You're the only one claiming you "know."

Secondarily, while the weather analogy may not have been a good one, it does highlight a point. Weather perdictions are done based on models of the earth.

In CO (where I once lived) they couldn't explain whether it would rain 1 inch or snow 18 inches at any given time. The reason is the Cray super computers used to crunch the data weren't strong enough to mathematically represent the Rocky Mountains (I lived to the direct east in Colorado Springs). So, they basically never knew if a storm in the mountains would pass with little problems, never pass, weaken, or strengthen, because they simply couldn't tell what impact the mountains had.

That does highlight a problem in our computer models. If you can represent one mountain range, how do you represent and entire planet?

[joe]

Six Sigma, they can't tell you whether you will get rain or snow on any given day. But they can fairly accurately tell you how much snow vs. rain will fall on the area over the course of a decade. In my field, I can't tell you which businesses will occupy a storefront in a strip mall being built. But I can predict to a much higher level of certainty that there will be one or two shoe stores, that there won't be an auto parts store, etc, based on the conditions I know about the location, and projections about regional economic and land use patterns and trends.

I don't know whether this nickel is going to come up heads or tails. I do know that if I flipped it 100 times, I'd get between 48 and 52 tails. Climate modelling is not weather forecasting.

[gaius marius]

gaius, show me a non-global warming circumstance where your principle and not mine would apply.

your error isn't situational, mr rikurzhen, but logical. it demonstrates a misconception of scientific method:

1) observation/definition
2) hypothesis
3) prediction
4) experiment

example: a scientist observes and then hypothesizes p, which yields a prediction of p*.

then begins a process of experimentation where all results p1, p2, p3 must comply with p* in order for p to be considered true. if ever any evidence arises by which p(n) does not comply with p*, then p is negated, symbolized as ~p.

everyone everywhere can swear to the validity of p -- but when p(n) such that ~p, p is wrong. this is hume's problem of induction, and an understanding of it is the antidote to hubris in human events.

do you still need an example? take newtonian physics. for centuries, it seemed to predict everything, and everyone believed it to be true so completely -- experts and non-experts alike -- such that a common fin de siecle notion was the "end of science". but it wasn't true.

but the real problem with climatology -- and why it cannot now be a science in the way that you and joe seem to want it to be -- is that there is no experiment, and cannot be. because of this, it cannot even begin to approach newton's physics.

modelling the earth with supercomputers is little different than modelling it with a tennis ball -- so vast is the difference in complexity of the reality of that system and our models.

but even if a model is created such that it complies with all that we know about earth past -- a very distant prospect, btw -- the best we can be said to have done is backtested and fitted the model to one possible history of a system that is inherently chaotic and could have produced an infinite number of alternative histories for which we have not accounted -- akin to predicting the stock market with a few backtested rules.

it will be literally centuries before any model created today can have valid predictions behind it that can verify or refute its accuracy. THEN, perhaps we can call climatology science.

[joe]

gaius, what experiment proves the evolution occurred?

[Rikurzhen]

gaius, i'm a phd student in biology.

i appreciate your position, but you are actually the one who's mistaken about science. you can in fact have a science in which you cannot do experiments. an example that i am quite familiar with is human genetics. you can only analyze data from the "natural experiments" going on in the world; you cannot for ethical reason do experiments on humans. climate change science looks much the same to me, and without a good published reason to disbelieve it, i'll take the well justified opinion of climate science experts over random unpublished criticisms.

[gaius marius]

gaius, what experiment proves the evolution occurred?

it's been directly observed on the microbial level, mr joe.

[Rikurzhen]

p.s. i'm personally convinced that karl popper solved the problem of induction, and that science does not have such a problem.

[gaius marius]

an example that i am quite familiar with is human genetics. you can only analyze data from the "natural experiments" going on in the world; you cannot for ethical reason do experiments on humans.

for this reason, mr rikurzhen, i'm sure you understand that your (and our) knowledge is inherently assumptive and necessarily incomplete because hypothetical, as it is undemonstrated by experiment.

but hopefully not forever. 🙂

[Lowdog]

Thank you, gaius, for being able to communicate well what I have been trying to so clumsily.

And joe, I think that trying to predict climate trends is more like trying to figure out who's going to win the super bowl in 2020 than whether the Pats will win their season opener or any of your other football analogies. Read most of gaius' comments, mine seem to be oafish. 🙂

As an aside, look, I'm not trying to pretend that a "problem" doesn't exist. And as I've said before, I love nature and plants and animals as much as any environmentalist (maybe). But to use an inexact science to curtail economic advancement is ludicrous, especially at the levels they are suggesting.

I think Lomborg's point is spot on, whatever his overall politics.

[Rikurzhen]

gaius, that's what statistical analyses are for.

[fyodor]

fyodor, how would a property owner sue every single consumer of fossil fuels on earth, and how would the court break down each defendant's share of the award? This is a collective problem

joe, I don't know why you're asking me that as I've very specifically acknowledged that problem on other threads and haven't said anything about it here. I've suggested previously that taxing pollution as close to the source as possible and using the revenue to lower other taxes might be the most efficient means of addressing the harm to person and property done by pollution. But I know such a plan leaves much to the devils that are in the details.

Maybe you mixed me up with Gary Gunnel's post indicating that it would be consistent with libertarianism for those whose homes are swallowed up by the ocean to sue those who caused the swallowing. His post, I believe, was in reaction to the discussion over how much anyone in the US should care about such swallowings. In said discussion I took issue with a likely troll who challenged others to give him any reason to care.

And so it goes....

[Rikurzhen]

inexact science

as comapred to what?

the instrumentation of climate science sounds precise enough to me.

do you mean science that uses statistics to analyze data? i'm not sure there are any parts of the natural sciences left that do not.

[joe]

"it's been directly observed on the microbial level, mr joe."

gaius, even Creationists admit that evolution within a species is real. It's been observed in moths, too. I'm talking about the evolution of new species from older species. What experiment proves that?

lowdog, "And joe, I think that trying to predict climate trends is more like trying to figure out who's going to win the super bowl in 2020 than whether the Pats will win their season opener or any of your other football analogies." No, lowdog. Climate science does not try to predict discreet events. It predicts large-scale trends. That is the key distinction between climate modelling and weather forecasting, and it's an important distinction to understand.

Apologies, fy, t'was indeed GG.

[foobie]

Even if we accept that the most extreme claims of the global warming proponents are true, there is still zero evidence or even supporting assumptions that reliably indicate that any of the proposed 'solutions' would have any beneficial effect at all (and that's assuming you can even clearly identify beneficial in such a manner as to apply to everyone), let alone meet reasonable cost/benefit goals.

The everpresent desire to be seen to try to do something about a problem is almost always worse than the problem itself.

I have no problem at all with reasonable efforts to mitigate anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. Where I do have a problem is in the assumption that the 'solution' should not be equivalently applied to all.

Additionally, the best solution for problems caused by human progress is more human progress.

[pragmatist]

Rikurzhen -- why haven't I published what I'm saying? Good question.

First, if you know anything about publishing and the academic world today -- today it's as politically correct to believe mankind is killing off the whole world, as it is to never say anything negative about Islam in public. So trying to publish this would be a lot like pissing into the wind. Sure you can do it. But are you sure you really want to? I'm probably never going to get paid for it.

Second, even if I did, what would change? Nothing. There are entire buearacracies founded around this issue. Does anyone believe for a moment that it's all going to go away because some engineer published one little voice of dissention? I don't. And I know I'm not the first to voice the kinds of dissention that I'm voicing here.

Other people have already published ideas in the same vein I'm in. I could get you a list of references if I had half a day to spend on it.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know everything about atmospheric science, which in fact is a highly multi-disciplinary subject. However, when atmospheric science is running models that contradict things I *do* know very well to be true, well, I have to conclude something's wrong. Nowhere else in the realm of science, except environmental "science", have I encountered theories that ask me to forget everything I've learned.

We don't even fully understand the chemistry behind electroless metal plating baths yet, which are vastly simpler than the earth's atmosphere. So how do we (our scientists) presume to understand climate change so thoroughly? I think it's highly presumptuous.

Gaius, you've done well while I was gone.

And I think I've said about all I can on this subject. I've come expect that many will not agree with me, or take me a face value -- and they shouldn't.

I dearly wish -- hope -- that a lot more people will dig a lot harder into the "science" of this whole issue, before anybody passes any stupid laws that wipe out our economy for naught.

[Lowdog]

Rikurzhen - compared to what it's trying to model. I'm not talking about "science that uses statistics to analyze data". Read gaius' posts. Here's an example: "modelling the earth with supercomputers is little different than modelling it with a tennis ball -- so vast is the difference in complexity of the reality of that system and our models."

The number of factors needed to be considered to get anywhere near the accuracy to be "exact" is enormous. Of course, here is where my limited knowledge comes into play. But even an "expert" could tell you that there are factors no one even knows exist! That's what I mean when I say "inexact".

Ok joe, I'll give you that, I suppose. I never took statistics in college. 🙂 (Being serious here, and I don't mind being honest when I'm not very knowledgable about something.) But point about weather and climate science is not so micro as you're dissecting it. I'm just saying with that example that they are both such complex systems, you can't factor in every variable, therefore your data has to be suspect. I'm not say "wrong!" or that it can't be indicative of something significant, but you've got to be careful how much stock you put into it...

[Rikurzhen]

foobie, pragmatist, and lowdog: you've all made good points.

nonetheless, until such a time as global warming denial can convince a significant subset of scientist, no one should believe the claims of denialists. thus, a political solution based on global warming denial is foolish. it amounts to ignoring a warning while there is still time to act.

of course, the downstream questions of what to do about it are completely dependent on value judgments -- as Lomborg's essay demonstrates.

[gaius marius]

Similarly, we know for certain that CO2 levels are higher than they've been for a long time. We know that 8 of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past decade. We know that storms are more frequent and severe. We know that certain aquatic habitats are becoming warmer, and that some of the species therein are less successful. We know that other species are acclimating to areas that were formerly out of their range. We have a good explanation for this - global warming is causing changes in the functioning of the atmosphere and ocean.

joe, these are the problems -- do we know these things? the answer is far from "yes", in my education (which is not nil, despite what might be easier for you to think...) your acceptance of the truth of these things -- moreover, the implications you're drawing from them -- assumes *far* too much.

for instance -- We know that certain aquatic habitats are becoming warmer, and that some of the species therein are less successful. -- i agree, but this is a continuous process that has been ongoing since there has been ocean life. what does this say about global warming? nothing -- the two may be independent, as far as we can show.

rather than go through the litany of debunking all this, let me simply observe that there is significant division among the knowledgeable on these simple observations -- regardless of where any majority might lie -- and nothing that could be construed as the absence of debate exists, regardless of what some seem to believe or want to believe. (indeed, that is the point of the process of scientific criticism in climatology circles, which is vigorous and ongoing.)

where such debate exists, how can anyone imagine the matter settled with respect to predictions -- to such a degree that we make decisions upon it such as we might on gravity? this seems to be an unimaginable (indeed, irresponsible) exaggeration of the certainty of anything having to do with climatology predictions, which are as yet completely unverified. again, -- centuries -- of observation will be needed to verify anything about the models in use.

i say this not to be obstructionist, but simply to point out what scientific rigor demands. we all want to know much more much sooner -- but CAN NOT. all of this remains far outside popper's third world of objective knowledge.

[gaius marius]

nonetheless, until such a time as global warming denial can convince a significant subset of scientist, no one should believe the claims of denialists.

mr rikurzhen, it saddens me greatly to recognize that you are both a ph.d. student and simultaneously believe this. i mean no disrespect, but it is a profound failure of your education that consensus is what you would construe as good science.

p.s. i'm personally convinced that karl popper solved the problem of induction, and that science does not have such a problem.

science may not, but climatology does. 🙂 popper's operating clause has to be falsifiability -- the entrace exam for the third world -- and manmade global warming is not falsifiable. there is no experiment, no test. can you argue otherwise?

[gaius marius]

I'm talking about the evolution of new species from older species. What experiment proves that?

"species" evolution is what we're observing. what separates a banana from a human is what separates generations of fruit flies -- the threshold for "species" change is essentially arbitrary.

[Thomas Paine's Goiter]

Similarly, we know for certain that CO2 levels are higher than they've been for a long time.

It seems a bit intellectually dishonest of you not to ask how much time is a 'long time'.

We know that 8 of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past decade.

Here we are. 'On record' - this should set off bells in anyone's head. The accepted accurate climate 'record' accounts for approximately 0.0000026% of Earth's history, approximately 0.23% of homo sapien history, and 2.4% of recorded history.

Admittedly, these warming trends are apparent within our minute timeframe. But there is no way that we can accurately begin to understand what it means to the climate of the earth as a whole.

So what happens when the next supervolcano blows and fills the atmosphere with CO2 and ash and undoes 25 years of man's work? Five years henceforth do we say "These have been 5 of the 6 coldest years on record" and "Global cooling is the greatest crisis that we have ever known!"?

[Rikurzhen]

Rather than quibbiling over this or that, let me try to restate the global warming denial thesis being presented here so that you can see where the mistake is:

* climate science on global warming is no better than guessing

that's a very strong thesis, and almost certainly false. by how much climate science is better than guessing is debatable and depends on details that none of us know.

nonetheless, it is pretty clear that it is at least partially informative about what will happen if we continue to add green house gases to the atmosphere.

[Rikurzhen]

manmade global warming is not falsifiable. there is no experiment, no test. can you argue otherwise?

there's an ongoing experiment that will answer the question: wait 40 years and see if the global mean temperature gets warmer

[Rick Barton]

Leaving aside all objections of principle and practicality, and how much warming is actually occurring. Just on the basis of the state of the scientific evidence, no carbon tax can be justified. There seem to be other causes for the warming. Such as solar:

Scientists at Armagh Observatory claim a unique weather record could show that the Sun has been the main contributor to global warming over the past two centuries.

The researchers point out that the mean average temperature at Armagh seems to be related to the length of the Sun's activity cycle.

"I suspect that the greenhouse lobby have under-estimated the role of solar variability in climate change,"

From:

"Sun's warming influence 'under-estimated'"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1045327.stm

and also:

"Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3869753.stm

From this article: "The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer."

Another cause of warming, from Nature:

"Cities and fields make the world seem warmer
Impact of land use on climate change has been underestimated.

http://www.ecology.com/ecology-news-links/2003/articles/5-2003/5-29-03/warmer.htm

And, here is a strong critique of the whole "human caused" warming paradigm:

"New Perspectives in Climate Science: What the EPA Isn't Telling Us"

http://www.independent.org/tii/media/pdf/2003-07-28-climate_report.pdf

[Rick Barton]

Concerning the "scientific consensus":

"Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus " by Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html

[Rikurzhen]

Rick,

I'll borrow this response from another post:

It is not solar OR anthropic greenhouse gas forcing. It is solar AND anthropic greenhouse gas forcings.

The reason we know this is that after accounting as best one can for the influence of the sun you still can't match the observed climate over the past ~30-50 years without including the effects of additional greenhouse gas forcing.

[Gary Gunnels]

Love this "states' rights" angle to this issue:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6725248/

[Rick Barton]

Rikurzhen,

I'm not saying that anthropic greenhouse gases are no factor in any warming. I'm saying that there is evidece that shows that they are not the main factor, or even a critical factor.

Actually, even the TOTAL amount of observed warming may not be critical:

"Better Detection, Not Global Warming, Behind Increase In Large Antarctic Icebergs, New BYU Study Shows"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021024070050.htm

[Fabius]

I hate to agree with the man who helped destroy the Republic but I love to disagree with Josephus. Marius, thank you.

I'll believe global warming when Atlantic City is underwater. Unfortunately I'll be long dead before anyone can prove the cause of global warming, if it occurs.

But if Atlantic City does wind up under water, good riddance.

And for once, I do not feel the least apologetic for not sounding serious. Some people need to have their speticism levels adjusted. Global warming is one of the top ten generators of headlines that begin "Experts warn ..." and "Scientists predict ...". That should tell you something.

QFMC cos. V

[Fabius]

And some people need to learn to spell skepticism.

QFMC cos. V

[Rick Barton]

Fabius,

What does QFMC cos. V mean?

[Stevo Darkly]

Sort of OT, but just so you know, the ultimate parody of a sensationalist/left-leaning headline, to whit:

[insert name of global catastrophe here]! Women, Children Hit Hardest!

... has just about come true. From "the online home of CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada's national public broadcaster":

Women more at risk from climate change: Canadian at UN conference
12:33 AM EST Dec 17

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Severe weather caused by global warming can pose greater physical danger to women than men, a Canadian attending a UN conference on climate change said Friday.

"For instance, often women don't know how to swim, so in a flood situation that can lead to a higher instance of death or injury," Angie Daze, a program manager with a Canadian group called Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change, said...

That made my eyes roll so much, they reamed out my sockets to a larger bore.

Whole thing here.

[pragmatist]

I took one last look back, and --

Rikurzhen,
It sounds like you're trying to be reasonable but I can't agree with your reasons.

Someone above said volcanos don't emit CFC's. I remember reading an article where someone was measuring what were basically CFC's coming out of Mt St Helen, I'll have to dig it up. Though, I can't vouch that all volcanoes emit these types of gasses.

Volcanoes are a huge reason why I can't buy the "man is destroying the atmosphere" line. LOOK at all the crap that comes out of even a small volcanoe. How is that different, from the atmosphere's standpoint, from what comes out of civilization?

So, has anybody convinced anybody of anything, in this whole train of conversation here? The only thing I'm convinced of is that it will never be looked at scientifically by the gov't buearacracies that have carved there existence out of this issue -- and they carry the most weight because *they* fund most of the research.

Do anybody on this whole post think that a buearacracy is going to stand up one day and commit suicide by announcing that they've been wrong after all about global warming? This issue now has a life of it's own. Somebody tell me how we're supposed to kill it. I sincerely doubt there will be objective scientific study of global warming until we do kill it.

[Colin]

I think it is valuable to consider 'climate change' as something different than 'global warming' (i.e. that greenhouse gasses are forcing the warming trend.)

Wine used to be grown some 200 miles north of where it is currently grown. The early Chinese dynasties were founded on growing wheat. Parts of the world during recorded history was much warmer than it is now. Bruegel painted pictures of skiers on the canals of Amsterdam; there are fairs held on the frozen Thames in London. Parts of the world during recorded history were much colder than they are now.

Upshot... we -know- climate change happens, and on scales that dramatically affect entire continents. Many of the dire results predicted by 'Global Warming' are going to happen anyway.

Sadly, this doesn't blace the blame, and resulting financial liability, for the changing climate on the industrialized nations... but its still an important thing to keep in mind. (This is at the heart of why the issue is so contentious; a ton of people who know nothing about the issue smell hand-outs, and have lept aboard.) We know that treating the symptoms of Climate Change is going to be worthwhile.

If we are going to be forced to pay huge sums to belay the fears of global environmental meltdown; we at a minumum have an interest to make sure this money is well spent. The issue has taken on a political life of its own that is no longer strongly coupled with science. Dealing with poverty, famine, Aids... these -will- offset the impact of global warming, if it exists. If it doesn't... well, at least a lot of good had been done; we wouldn't have wasted all that money in the name of political appeasement.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

pragmatist:

From what I understand, it's not only volcanos that are causing the problem, but also all the cows that are belching and farting methane into the atmosphere. Ralph Nader himself made a joke that we should put bags over their "assholes".

I agree that this will never go away, as long as there is hatred towards industrialism, and the have-nots impeding the progress of the haves purely out of sour grapes.

[gaius marius]

there's an ongoing experiment that will answer the question: wait 40 years and see if the global mean temperature gets warmer

but what will that prove, mr rikurzhen, even if it happens? that itself is still not verification, as the cause of such warming cannot be implied to be anthopic to the exclusion of solar output/tectonic emission/unknown factors. there remains no test by which the premise can be falsified. the geologic history of the earth indicates that massive environmental changes are de rigeuer; such change is proof of nothing anthropic.

and need i point out that we cannot be conclusively said to have observed that the phenomena is even occuring -- regardless of what human co2 output may be?

unfortunately, i've no doubt that, should the sea level rise twenty feet in ten years coinciding with a short burst in solar output, millions will be attacking factories with pitchforks and torches. again, global warming's popularity as a thesis says far more about the human need for mystic apocalysm than it does any scientific deduction.

[Rikurzhen]

gaius et al:

you cannot analyze a complex natural system by intuition alone. you need data and mathematics. only vanity/foolishness would cause someone to believe that they can just reason out in their heads whether anthropogenic climate change is real or not. which makes the interpretations of experts the only reliable source of evidence. find experts that disagree if you want to convince anyone of our points.

[Rikurzhen]

gaius, the falsifiablity criteria of science is a theoretical one -- that is, theoretical falsifiablity -- not a pragmatic one. with enough money, time, and political power you could falsify global warming claims. such an experiment would most likely be unethical however. so instead we must try to figure it out indirectly. fortunately, this is possible with the right data and mathematics.

[joe]

Mr. Nice Guy, hate to burst your bubble...Oh, wait I love to burst your bubble...Anyway, the methane "emissions" of cattle are themselves a consequence of the industrialization of farming. There are far more cattle, and they fart more, because of the methods they use to raise the cattle. If the beef industry still utilzed free-range grazing, there would be much less methane released.

Typical of Nader to propose a tailpipe solution, though 🙂