What Do We Think About Climate Change

what are the facts, there seem to be two sets or so some believe

 

There's only one set of facts. Nobody knows them precisely, and I believe that both camps have something right... and much wrong..

 

Yeah, Troy,

Maybe you do just suck at the whole debate game, what with your constant appeals to authority, and argument by incredulity ("I just can't believe that!"), both basic logical fallacies.

On your problem with the transitional form argument, I would have stated the case for evolution like this:

We know that a very high fraction, like 99.9999% of all animals that lived and died on earth long ago, left no trace whatever of their existence. At least we are lucky enough that .0001% DID leave behind a fossil here or there, but compared with the total that lived, this is a very, very small fraction. And the dominant forms are the ones that were 'in production' for a long time, and therefore what we see in the fossil record. The 'transitional' forms were not around nearly as long, perhaps 1/100 or 1/10000 as long, so far fewer individuals ever existed of these forms. It stands to reason that the same fraction of this already much smaller number that ever lived 'made the cut' to somehow become fossils that we can find today; in fact statistically speaking, there ought to be so few of them, we likely will never find an example of each transitional form.

BTW, a belief in evolution and creation is not mutually exclusive. Evolutionary theory has a hard time explaining what happened at the very beginning, even as it handily explains how life forms changed over time and why they did so. It's not unscientific to believe that at the very beginning, a creative 'hand' was needed to set the whole 'machine' of our universe with its physical laws into motion. A corollary of those physical laws is natural selection. It is apparent that it operates around us and has shaped the natural world. Even if a higher power did intelligently create the universe, it clear that natural selection was one of those creations since it is one of many outcomes of the laws of physics, both classical and quantum.

Darwin himself was a firm believer in God; he understood evolution to be the tool God used to create the natural living world around us. The 'fairy tale' type explanation set forth in various holy books is just a man's best understanding of the world around him at the time it was written.

Jimbo

 

i have an obsession, i just cant think of what it is at the moment

 

Jimbo, that creationist was about as amenable to reason as you are. I spent a lot more time and effort on him than I will on you though, because it hadn't really sunk in yet that you can't argue with a fanatic. Nor had I heard that, "arguing on the internet is like being in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded."

Your parting shots remind me of my vacuum cleaner salesman days, when I was in the Navy and sold them part time. My sales manager always told me that if nothing else worked, we should insult the customer: tell them they obviously didn't care whether their home was clean and their children healthy; that they probably couldn't pass a credit check anyway, etc. His theory was that if you didn't either make a sale or get thrown bodily out of a house, you hadn't tried hard enough.

You sound like his little brother.

edit: Tell you what. Talking about "put up or shut up," why don't you go read this place and try arguing with them. But I warn you it's dangerous; you're expected to actually think.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

Although all public relations professionals are bound by a duty to not knowingly mislead the public, some have executed comprehensive campaigns of misinformation on behalf of industry clients on issues ranging from tobacco and asbestos to seat belts.

Lately, these fringe players have turned their efforts to creating confusion about climate change. This PR campaign could not be accomplished without the compliance of media as well as the assent and participation of leaders in government and business.

My opinion is that you're just swallowing the bs from PR professionals who get paid to muddy the waters, and have been seduced into believing you're actually thinking.

http://www.desmogblog.com/directory

 

I swallow what I do from Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Roy Spencer, Sally Baliunas, Bob Carter and a host of others in the field of climate science.

Rchard Lindzen in particular is probably the most renowned and eminent scientist in this field in the entire world, and he's the biggest thorn to the AGW alarmists. He chairs the climate science department at MIT.

Christy and Spencer figured out how to get temperature data from satellites during their time at NASA.

All of these people worked out the real world feedbacks for water vapor, and quantified how clouds and precipitation are the true regulators of the water vapor concentration, NOT puny changes in atmospheric CO2 as the alarmists would have you believe.

Bob Carter is one of the worlds leading paleo-climatologists specializing in mud and dirt cores. His work corroborates the worldwide MWP and many rapid climate shifts over the centuries, greater in rate and magnitude than 20th century warming.

When your AGW alarmists can explain within the framework of their flawed understanding why the climate did not 'run away' when CO2 levels were 10X or 20X (yes 7000ppm!) higher than today, then maybe you ought to believe in their scaremongering, but not until!

Jimbo

 

Knock Knock, door creeps open- Frosty puts his head round the door.

Merry Christmas you guys, keep at it, very interesting, -gotta go -bye.

 

I first entered this thread back on post 1224 as a person who believed that man made global warming was at least partially responsible for the warming we were seeing. That was 14 months ago or so.

The response to me was that I was basically an idiot who did not bother to read the preceding 1223 posts and if I had, I would have a clue what I was talking about. The kinder post suggested that I do a bit of studying on my own so that is what I did.

I could find very convincing data against global warming and could see the obstruction in science that was finally brought forth with the e-mail scam. On the AGW side all I could find was generally the "Science is settled" argumement and modeling and data based on tweaked data all with just a few scientist. Oh I could find a lot of information but that all seemed to use the same data and then add their own to it.

Now add to that the fact that I was checking daily data on my own and could see that things are cooling down and the people predicting AGW were not coming anywhere close to hitting the targets predicted by their models. That is in sharp contrast to the scientists who were predicting a cool down due to natural forces. They have been amazing with the accuracy of their predicitions.

Well, you can now count me as a total sceptic who believes we are in a natural cooling down period that may be far worse than any warming would have been and its likely to last half a century. I don't think there will be a whole lot of people who buy into the AGW thing for long. Nature should make a believer out of most If my research has been right.

 

Troy's done. Boston's "97%" is not popping up. Much I see suggests that most Americans are now, at least, sceptical. I like to think I convinced a person or two but the real gratitude goes to people like Guillermo and Jimbo (and an Earth that has been cooling for ten years!!!!!!!).
Hillery, at Obama's direction, "committed" to $100,000,000,000 a year (in concert with other countries) to countries not as gifted by natural selection. The payouts don't start for some time, and most of us know that this is the real intent of the AGW advocates (wealth redistribution) or, at least, that it would be part of the package. I believe that this payback is an appeasement and even Washington sees a crack in the 97% consensus (i.e., the $100,000,000,000 won't actually happen, or if it does, it will come in the form of aid that we would have given anyway).
WOW! and thanks to the people that did not give in. Seeds of doubt have been planted. We still need to be active in our communities to close this door and don't forget that even if the door is boarded shut, "acid oceans" is looming to fill that need niche (need to blame the west, feel guilty for our success, etc.)
I just rolled my eyes at these people for too many years. I promise to pull my weight on these matters in the future.

 

i wonder if the earth cares about human skepticism?

 

I wonder if it cares about "true belief'? So far, no.

 

Welcome back home, Pierre R. I'm sorry for having being rude to you in the past.

Best regards.

 

Copenhaguen has resulted a failure, as expected. Just only political blah, blah, blah, thanks God.

Merry Christmas, Frosty and the rest of the crew in this thread!

 

The world is bigger than we, Wardd. She'll keep on doing what she's been doing until the Sun exhausts its supply of hydrogen in around 4 billion years and becomes a red giant and Earth is vaporized. Then the good news.
Over the following billion years, the Sun will gradually die. As its core crashes inward, it will eventually become hot enough to ignite another of its constituent atoms, helium. The helium atoms will fuse together to form carbon! CARBON!
You, Boston, Troy, AlGore, and several other people (97% of the scientists polled) will have finally won...

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...And NOBODY will be able to argue with that.