If this is global warming ...

Yes you guys are right! So just make sure all you white dudes remember to vote liberal! These conservative white guys are fools, it is about time we do the right thing! Obama for President!

Yes! Damn all those no good EDUCATED people; those worthless scientists and engineers! What have they ever done for us anyway? No good microbial theory of disease! Pain-in-the-ass electro-magnetism! It's not like they ever did anything useful for the common, sensible man, like waste water management, or plant genetics to improve crops, or some kind of disease-preventing vaccine or something, or even some form of mechanical contrivance so I can get to work on time. Maybe even something I could sit down inside of so's I don't get rained on.

An don't get me started on those OTHER edumacated people, you know the ones who write BOOKS, and plays, and stuff like that, or who compose music or paint or dance. Damn it, I want some ENTERTAINMENT! Good thing I can still come here and get some for free. My God continue to bless letsrun.com!

Bob & Bob wrote:

Further evidence for my previous post. SCIENTISTS insist on peer reviewed journals. These peers can be conservative, liberal, black, or white. The difference is that these people are educated. The majority of the people arguing poltics in this thread are not... at least, not in any area of legitimate science.

I understand what you're saying, but the consensus opinion of scientists may not mean much in this particular case.

The science behind climate change is not well understood to say the least. It is a field that is in its infancy. In order to make real progress in this field, a fundamental change - what Kuhn called a "paradigm shift" will have to take place - and it will come from physicists and/or mathematicians, not meteorologists. In almost every case these paradigm shifts meet with stiff resistance and run counter to the scientific orthodoxy of the day.

The state of the art of climatology (or whatever you want to call this field of science) is such that phenomenological models are heavily relied on in conjunction with computer modeling. To be brief, there are no "fundamental equations of climate." Additionally, we simply don't have enough data to validate any model or test a theory. There is simply no way that we could possibly claim to have a thorough enough understanding of the fudamental interactions that produce changes in the climate in order to make the dire predictions that have been made.

So all of the people that are enamored with "global warming" and think that they know where we're headed are simply dead wrong. They may be right in the end, but only in the way of a stopped clock.

i don't really buy what your selling here, mainly because you treated "paradigm shift" as if it was some upperclass word, meaning you're not as well educated as me. regardless of the language though, if you are right, it is to the extent that scientists are claiming they're will be massive flooding in europe, but they're wrong, instead will get insane earthquakes in south america or somewhere else. We may not accurately be able to predict WHAT will happen or WHEN, but we definitely have the technology to measure the effects that we have ALREADY had on the earth and we know that we are screwing up the planet.

"the consensus opinion of scientists may not mean much in this particular case."

No, of course not. Not in this particular case. Just as in the similarly isolated cases of evolution, non-climate-related aspects of the environment, peak oil, embryonic stem cells, contraception, and everything else the rump-rammers in the current administration want to jam their lying cocks into. Hell, Big Tobacco contended scientists were wrong about their product too, right up until internal memos were leaked and it became, well, ludicrous to keep pretending. I mean, why trust the scientific consensus when we have political flacks, industry spokespersons, and preachers to tell us what's what? Huh?? HUH?!?!

Yea, remember vote for Obama! Unless H.Clinton gets the nomination then vote for her.

Two years ago, an analysis of a decade’s worth of scientific work on climate change—nearly a thousand articles—was conducted in order to determine the consensus view with respect to the subject. Not a single author deviated from the view that the majority of recent warming was attributable to human activities. Your arguments about scientific revolutions occurring in the past and a stopped clock being right twice a day are not exactly convincing refutations of this consensus.

There have been many paradigm shifts in the theory of gravity. Galileo’s revolutionary Pisa experiment upset the earlier works of Aristotle and Brahmagupta; his theory was in turn improved by Newton and Einstein. One day we may even see a quantum theory of gravity. But for the layman, nothing much has changed since Galileo—objects fall at (nearly) the same rate and air resistance causes any difference. Einstein’s version of gravity may have accomplished what Newton’s could not, but that doesn’t mean that accounting for a perturbation in Mercury’s orbit retroactively caused that apocryphal apple to fly skyward.

Your refrain seems to be that the outputs of global climate models can be completely dismissed because they incorporate non-linear equations. I believe that I adequately addressed this topic in previous posts, but I’ll reiterate the salient points: modern GCMs have been validated against past observations, they do not purport to provide exact predictions (only probabilistic ranges), and despite imperfectly modeled climate processes, climatologists state that superior methods would not change the overall conclusions. Furthermore, we do not even need these computer models to understand the basic phenomena behind recent climate change. A paradigm shift in chaos theory will not mitigate the fundamental implications of greenhouse gas emissions.

here is the thing, it doesn't matter if it is global warming or a climate change or whatever you want to call it. it all comes down to the fact that we should all agree that the current industrial lifestyle of society is not good for the climate, whether it has begun to take hold or not. we shouldn't wait for a crisis to start fixing our obviously harmful activities, and it is going to take a little compromise from those who refuse to admitt that anything could possibly be wrong with the environment. it is time for the current administration to take action to stop global climate change, or at least admitt that the scientists might possibly have some vague idea of what they are talking about.

Ah, now this is discussion :) I should say right from the start that although theres a possibility that it is incorrect, scientists doing the studies and providing evidence is surely a lot more productive than people going back and forth about liberal/conservative. Based on your post, I think you'd agree.

I agree that climate/weather prediction is still not very accurate. This is because predicting these sorts of events is chaotic and depends heavily on initial conditions. The only way to have any sort of predictions is numerically by computers. The amount of data needed to accurately predict things would be so huge that its impossible. So instead, a lot of averaging takes place and makes models that are fairly accurate.

Here's a dumb idea based totally on my observations. When I was a kid in the 70s there was a lot of pollution in the air. We couldn't see our downtown area 5 miles away. Today, every day is clear skies...very little polution is visible in the air. Could it be that there is less pollution in the air (more CO2 but less overall pollutive gases) and now more sunlight is reaching the earth. Warming it up? Perhaps the solution then is to put more pollution into the atmosphere. Fire up those SUVs and go for some joyrides!

the idea behind peer-reviewed lit. is so simple a child could understand the basic concepts.. your do you research(while supporting Inferences that will have to be made with citations of previous studies), present to other experts in your given field, for review. A good study will genrally cause debate in a given field, in the form of letters by experts either in support or against,to the given journal your study was published in(these letters will also be well cited). Subsequent studies will follow, and after many studies a consensus will be reached.. in the scientific community.

while not as sensational as presenting data directly to the general public(e.a popular science, discovery channel, time magazine etc..), it is the fair honest way to present your data.

as for liberals in science i dont know...you would have to do a study..i know in my field of interest(predator managment), experts tend to be more conservative(hunters trappers...what not). if you wish to get published though...it is unwise to bias you results...someone will pick up on it either by reading your article...or in subsequent study.

I can't stand how the topic of climate change divides everyone. Who cares if you are on the left, right, or center of the argument. We should all make choices based on what is good for us now and for generations to come.

Why not recycle?

Why drive a vehicle that's pumping a bunch of filthy gases into the air? If you can't afford it then don't worry about it. Make the contributions you can.

Why not hold industries to a higher standard when it comes to polluting the air, water, or land? Do you really enjoy seeing black smoke billowing from smokestacks or massive fish kills, etc.

Use a little less energy. Leave the light off when you take a shit.

And so on...

People on the far left think that if you can't become carbon neutral (or whatever else its called) then you are a criminal. People on the far right think you liberal hippie if you conform to any of the suggestions outlined in some new movie or newspaper article on climate change.

Do what you can and stop to think about why you are doing it every once and a while.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

Bob & Bob wrote:

I agree that climate/weather prediction is still not very accurate. This is because predicting these sorts of events is chaotic and depends heavily on initial conditions. The only way to have any sort of predictions is numerically by computers. The amount of data needed to accurately predict things would be so huge that its impossible. So instead, a lot of averaging takes place and makes models that are fairly accurate.

It's nice to see someone want to have a civil discussion, but this is a really poor attempt to explain how one deals with chaotic systems - "averaging" won't save you.

Please show me where I said anything about complete "dismissal" - I think that you may have a comprehension problem or that you're so stuck in your views you already think you know what I am saying. I just don't think that so called "pro-environmentalists" should get away with demagoguery - especially in the face of so many failed predicitions in the past.

"Climatologists state that superior methods would not change their overall conclusions" - this is why physicists will have to clean up this mess. A statement like this could only come from someone with an incomplete knowledge of complex dynamics.

Being able to reproduce the current state of the earth (say global mean temp) vs. time is only one part of predicting the future. Hopefully you realize that a few well timed volcanic eruptions could dramatically alter the global temp and its evolution with time. What about earthquakes and plate tectonics? Increased aerosol production?

But seeing as you're all worked up in a lather about doomsday - let's talk about a really scary scenario- the earth's magnetic field is diminishing in strength while the poles are moving. It's happening faster than ever before! We'll all die if the earth's magnetic field goes away! Maybe humans caused this - the data shows that in recent years that this reduction in magnitude is accelerating faster than ever! So run off and tell your congressman that we have to do something about "global magneto-reduction" and figure out a way how its all "insert your favorite whipping boy here"'s fault. Believe me if our magnetic goes away, global warming will look like a little heat wave.

dmb wrote:

It's nice to see someone want to have a civil discussion, but this is a really poor attempt to explain how one deals with chaotic systems - "averaging" won't save you.

Fair enough. I certainly don't claim to be an expert :P Though my background is physics, my knowledge of chaotic systems is (obviously) lacking.

show me one good source that talks about magnetic field shifting, and its link to industry...im guessing you pretty much made this up.." It's happening faster than ever before! "

regardless, some more liberal pinko organizations are calling on bush to do more to curb global climate change.

seriously wre do these bleeding heart companies like " aluminum giant Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, DuPont, General Electric, Lehman Brothers" get off trying to impose there liberal view points on this country.

Climate does not refer to one warm year. Climate Change is a prediction that weather and temperature will change in regions over a period of time. For example Britian will get warmer during global warming until the gulf stream slows down and fails to reach the british isles. Its not just about one wrong season.

but anyone who thinks global warming is real is just a tree hugger.

Sam f wrote:

show me one good source that talks about magnetic field shifting, and its link to industry...im guessing you pretty much made this up.." It's happening faster than ever before! "

It's not hard to find discussions of the changes happening in earth's magnetic field - and I was speaking 'toungue in cheek' - are you really that gullible?