The alleged hoax of global warming ...

[finnbow]

... was itself proven to be a hoax. This is indeed precious. The Koch Brothers helped fund a study to help undermine global warming research (remember the GOP brouhaha over "Climategate") only to have that study determine that global warming is indeed real.

I wonder if this is gonna get front and center coverage by Limbaugh and Faux News.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment...global-warming

[Twodogs]

Interesting funding on that study. You can get a "study" that will state every position possible on global warming as gospel. I'm in the "I'm not taking measurements so I don't know, but if the earth is warming it has nothing to do with our presence" group. It's just another reason to flush money down all sorts of toilets. Remember the hole in the ozone layer?

[whell]

Here's the payoff line for me:

"The work makes no attempt to attribute the rising temperatures to any particular cause. Nor does it include ocean temperatures, the subject of a future study."

I don't know if global warming is real or not, but for the sake of discussion let's assume that it is. The element of discussion that I reject completely is that man must be causing it, by doing everything from driving SUV's and breeding flatulent cows, so we must spend vast sums of money now on projects with dubious impact so that we can avert disaster.

Frankly, if global warming is occurring, it's far easier for me to get my head around the notion that it is attributable to natural cycles of heating and cooling that have been occurring during the entirety of earth's existence. The weather guys can't get the forecast right for tomorrow. I'm not ready to radically and fundamentally alter just about everything that we're doing based on conjecture.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

I don't know if global warming is real or not, but for the sake of discussion let's assume that it is.

We need not assume. From the lead scientist on the study:

From the lead scientist in the study:

"When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate."

To me, the issue is what you do about it, if anything. From a strict cost/benefit analysis in terms of human life and health, I'm inclined to believe that there are better ways to spend billions or trillions of dollars that would have a greater impact upon human life and health than efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (particularly if China and India don't play). That's where the debate should be.

It should not be a coordinated effort by the GOP and its enablers at Faux and Talk Radio to discredit climate scientists. These issues should be discussed on their own merits, not by Limbaugh slinging propaganda. We'll see if this study changes the debate.

Do you honestly think Faux or Talk Radio will give any airtime to this news?

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by finnbow

... was itself proven to be a hoax. This is indeed precious. The Koch Brothers helped fund a study to help undermine global warming research (remember the GOP brouhaha over "Climategate") only to have that study determine that global warming is indeed real.

I wonder if this is gonna get front and center coverage by Limbaugh and Faux News.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment...global-warming

I don't recall any real scientific debate over whether global warming was happening or not, but rather the cause was at issue. The Mueller Study didn't really address that point; thus, we're still left with the contentious issue of cause. The correlation models using PCA (Principal Component Analysis) seem to leave a lot of room for, shall I say, human decision error.

[merrylander]

Does not bother me in the least as the rising sea levels will probably make this place ocean front property, thus increasing its value.

[noonereal]

Originally Posted by whell

it's far easier for me to get my head around the notion that it is attributable to natural cycles.

Bingo.

This is a very profound statement.

I can't do it on over the INTERNET but if you take the size of the planet and the size of the atmosphere relative the planet size it becomes much easier to understand the potential fragility of the atmosphere to human activity.


If you simply look out the window and see a big sky you lose all perspective of relative size hence potential impact and it can be very hard to get one's head around the notion of man's impact.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by bhunter

I don't recall any real scientific debate over whether global warming was happening or not ...

But I assume you recall the political assertions from the GOP as to the validity of global warming research. That's my point. Even when there is no "real scientific debate" (your words), the GOP still insists it doesn't exist.

[piece-itpete]

True or fasle a great number of people believe we can reverse it or even slow it down. The abject failure of something as mild as Kyoto shows this is untrue. If the temps are warming we should be looking to our sea walls.

Originally Posted by merrylander

Does not bother me in the least as the rising sea levels will probably make this place ocean front property, thus increasing its value.

And there'll be surfing in Cleveland! :banana:

Pete

[merrylander]

Hey, that gives me an idea, if we all insist that the GOP does not exist will they go away?