'Whatever happened to global warming?'

[Trucha]

Whoops!

http://climatescienceinternational.org/images/stories/pdf/gao-report-2011.pdf

Government Accountability Office finds that U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) surface temperature record is unreliable.

Too many (42%) of the surface temperature measuring sites were placed too close to areas of artificial heat such as asphalt parking lots, airport tarmacs or near air conditioners that spew out heat to the outdoors.

The science is settled, if by "settled" you mean fraudulent.

A conservative white male weighs in as a denier! Shocking!

 

[old_tony]

Whoops!

http://climatescienceinternational.org/images/stories/pdf/gao-report-2011.pdf

Government Accountability Office finds that U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) surface temperature record is unreliable.

Too many (42%) of the surface temperature measuring sites were placed too close to areas of artificial heat such as asphalt parking lots, airport tarmacs or near air conditioners that spew out heat to the outdoors.

The science is settled, if by "settled" you mean fraudulent.

A conservative white male weighs in as a denier! Shocking!

If it's not happening, how can someone "deny" it?

 

[deskslave]

Whoops!

http://climatescienceinternational.org/images/stories/pdf/gao-report-2011.pdf

Government Accountability Office finds that U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) surface temperature record is unreliable.

Too many (42%) of the surface temperature measuring sites were placed too close to areas of artificial heat such as asphalt parking lots, airport tarmacs or near air conditioners that spew out heat to the outdoors.

The science is settled, if by "settled" you mean fraudulent.

A conservative white male weighs in as a denier! Shocking!

If it's not happening, how can someone "deny" it?

Because it is happening, which you'd know if you read any research that wasn't funded by oil companies. Or even if you'd read any research that was funded by the Koch suc...brothers. See above.

The facts are against you, yet again.

 

[Azrael]

Don't forget the Scaifes. They fund just as hard as the other climate change deniers.

 

[Trucha]

Whoops!

http://climatescienceinternational.org/images/stories/pdf/gao-report-2011.pdf

Government Accountability Office finds that U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) surface temperature record is unreliable.

Too many (42%) of the surface temperature measuring sites were placed too close to areas of artificial heat such as asphalt parking lots, airport tarmacs or near air conditioners that spew out heat to the outdoors.

The science is settled, if by "settled" you mean fraudulent.

A conservative white male weighs in as a denier! Shocking!

If it's not happening, how can someone "deny" it?

I rest my case. If 97 doctors tell you you've got cancer, and three say you don't ... if you tell me you're going with the three you're full of BS. But hey, who knows science better than conservative white males?

 

[Hokie_pokie]

Not sure attacking "conservative white males" does anything constructive to advance the discussion, but whatever. We all come to this board with our own biases and self-motivations.

Kinda difficult at this point, at least in the opinion of this particular "conservative white male," to argue that man's actions haven't had some negative effect on the global climate. And frankly it infuriates me when so many of the people who sit next to me in church every Sunday, and as such should have a vested interest in protecting the planet they believe was created by God, don't even consider the possibility of man-made global warming simply because it's a "liberal" concept.

At the same time, this planet has been around a long, long time. The earth has seen prolonged periods of warming and cooling (hello Ice Age!) long before there were factories and automobiles with internal-combustion engines. I've read many respected scientists who believe the alternating pattern of warming and cooling will continue regardless of man's impact on the process.

Conservative or liberal, black or white, I'd hope we could at least agree that it is our responsibility as the people who inhabit this wondrous planet to nurture it and make sure we have something to pass on to future generations. While thoughtful people can disagree on how to go about that, at least it would be a starting point.

But considering the sorry state of our political discourse, it seems that this is just another area in which we are destined to fail.

 

[Trucha]

Not sure attacking "conservative white males" does anything constructive to advance the discussion, but whatever. We all come to this board with our own biases and self-motivations.

Kinda difficult at this point, at least in the opinion of this particular "conservative white male," to argue that man's actions haven't had some negative effect on the global climate. And frankly it infuriates me when so many of the people who sit next to me in church every Sunday, and as such should have a vested interest in protecting the planet they believe was created by God, don't even consider the possibility of man-made global warming simply because it's a "liberal" concept.

At the same time, this planet has been around a long, long time. The earth has seen prolonged periods of warming and cooling (hello Ice Age!) long before there were factories and automobiles with internal-combustion engines. I've read many respected scientists who believe the alternating pattern of warming and cooling will continue regardless of man's impact on the process.

Conservative or liberal, black or white, I'd hope we could at least agree that it is our responsibility as the people who inhabit this wondrous planet to nurture it and make sure we have something to pass on to future generations. While thoughtful people can disagree on how to go about that, at least it would be a starting point.

But considering the sorry state of our political discourse, it seems that this is just another area in which we are destined to fail.

Completely agree. It actually isn't my intent to attack "conservative white males" — it's just incredibly revealing that this is the group that, by a wide margin, is the most skeptical about whether warming is actually occurring (they're finally coming around here) and whether humankind has a role (still resistant).
Many people see great parallels between this issue and the tobacco question of several decades ago — in part because many of the same hired guns who kept telling us cigarette smoking is harmless are on the anti-warming train today. First they tried to tell us that cigarette smoking isn't harmful, and when that was shot down, they went to the second-hand-smoke argument, and handily lost that one, too.
Methinks we'll see a similar outcome on climate.

 

[JR]

Well, this is pretty interesting

http://tinyurl.com/3vsyy3c

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

In other words, the deniers' claims about the alleged sloppiness or fraudulence of climate science are wrong. Muller's team, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, rigorously explored the specific objections raised by skeptics — and found them groundless.

 

[Starman]

Not sure attacking "conservative white males" does anything constructive to advance the discussion, but whatever. We all come to this board with our own biases and self-motivations.

Kinda difficult at this point, at least in the opinion of this particular "conservative white male," to argue that man's actions haven't had some negative effect on the global climate. And frankly it infuriates me when so many of the people who sit next to me in church every Sunday, and as such should have a vested interest in protecting the planet they believe was created by God, don't even consider the possibility of man-made global warming simply because it's a "liberal" concept.

At the same time, this planet has been around a long, long time. The earth has seen prolonged periods of warming and cooling (hello Ice Age!) long before there were factories and automobiles with internal-combustion engines. I've read many respected scientists who believe the alternating pattern of warming and cooling will continue regardless of man's impact on the process.

Conservative or liberal, black or white, I'd hope we could at least agree that it is our responsibility as the people who inhabit this wondrous planet to nurture it and make sure we have something to pass on to future generations. While thoughtful people can disagree on how to go about that, at least it would be a starting point.

no no no no no no no no no, you've got it all wrong -- in order to promote and perpetuate the miracle of the free market economic system it is imperative we burn, we drill, we mine, we chop, we plow, we raze every single thing we can get our hands on as fast as we possibly can. Anyone suggesting otherwise is a pinko socilist commie (not to mention an enviro-nazi tree hugger) and needless to say a job killer.

 

[Dick Whitman]

At the same time, this planet has been around a long, long time. The earth has seen prolonged periods of warming and cooling (hello Ice Age!) long before there were factories and automobiles with internal-combustion engines. I've read many respected scientists who believe the alternating pattern of warming and cooling will continue regardless of man's impact on the process.

(1) Not at this pace.
(2) And, in the prior warming and cooling periods, there weren't 7 billion people populating every shore and tilling every field.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

At the same time, this planet has been around a long, long time. The earth has seen prolonged periods of warming and cooling (hello Ice Age!) long before there were factories and automobiles with internal-combustion engines. I've read many respected scientists who believe the alternating pattern of warming and cooling will continue regardless of man's impact on the process.

(1) Not at this pace.
(2) And, in the prior warming and cooling periods, there weren't 7 billion people populating every shore and tilling every field.

And destroying the rainforest at two acres per second.

 

[Hokie_pokie]

(1) Not at this pace.
(2) And, in the prior warming and cooling periods, there weren't 7 billion people populating every shore and tilling every field.

And destroying the rainforest at two acres per second.

Points well taken ... At the same time, I don't think those are uniquely American problems. It's a global problem -- and while America could obviously do more to take a leadership role, I'm not too optimistic that even if our leaders take dramatic actions that crush what's left of our economy, China and India and all the other big-time polluters would do anything other than pause for a second, shrug their shoulders and keep on doing what they're doing now.

 

[Dick Whitman]

(1) Not at this pace.
(2) And, in the prior warming and cooling periods, there weren't 7 billion people populating every shore and tilling every field.

And destroying the rainforest at two acres per second.

Points well taken ... At the same time, I don't think those are uniquely American problems. It's a global problem -- and while America could obviously do more to take a leadership role, I'm not too optimistic that even if our leaders take dramatic actions that crush what's left of our economy, China and India and all the other big-time polluters would do anything other than pause for a second, shrug their shoulders and keep on doing what they're doing now.

It's less of an American problem than it is a problem for developing countries. As the wealthiest nation on earth, we could probably absorb most of the impact. Russia would, in fact, benefit from global warming according to most projections. India is one country that I often see projected as getting absolutely slammed.

The problem is that the United States is the biggest contributor, both per capita and historically (but passed up in overall annual emissions by China), but also a nation that stands to lose in a cost-benefit analysis of cutting emissions.

We have very little incentive to cut emissions, and a great deal of incentive to continue business as usual.

 

[Azrael]

Why are they clearcutting all that Amazon rain forest to graze cattle?