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It means DarrinS either relies on the ignorance of his audience or magnanimously generalizes his own.
Is Darrin actually asking if there has been any branch of Science that has tried to counteract its critics? Is he going to next ask if there is ever a thunderstorm that has produced rain? Perhaps he wonders if there is a fire that has ever been hot?
It means DarrinS either relies on the ignorance of his audience or magnanimously generalizes his own.
That's an awful lot of effort just to avoid discussing anything in the article.
The WSJ is as wing-nut as M$M gets....
Proof: other articles from the WSJ...
Wall Street Journal: Gun-owners happier, richer than non gun-owners
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120856454897828049.html
American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126040517376983621.html
Wall Street Journal columnist basically sez "The poor should pay more so the rich can play more"
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/20...oore-tax-poor/
Wall Street Journal: Oil Spill Is a Failure of Government
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6...-of-Government
I could go on all night...the WSJ is a conservative/GOP/Wing-nut mouthpiece
To which I would counter with an equally serious question:
Is there any objective measurement over a given period of time that would dissuade an AGW denier?
For example, if the average global temperature anomaly corresponded almost perfectly to that of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations, would you start to believe that CO2 drives temperature?
If you say no, then you are are not basing your belief on science, you are basing it on faith.
To answer your serious question:
If the weight of the science tilts against it, I would be happy. I have no personal investment in the theory, and would be somewhat releived if the worst did not come to pass.
Until then, I think a prudent and conservatively risk-mitigating approach is to take some steps to mitigate potential risk, rather than some radical "do nothing" approach that seems to be favored by most "deniers".
I push especially hard for limits on CO2 because limiting CO2 generally means using less fossil fuels and more renewables, something that is better for the economy in the long run than "doing nothing".
Reducing CO2 output mitigates the worst risks of man-made climate change AND the coming fossil fuel depletion crisis.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
No, I responded again because I wasn't certain that I actually posted my reply.
I really get tired of your assumptions when I consider mine explained.
The ozone is depleting and the ice is melting.
What more science do you all need to see?
He has a valid point. After all these years of government grants looking for it, AGW still has no proof.
How is that similar to be saying I thought I completed a post but might not of, or didn't?
I only remember one time before that i didn't make a post i thought I did.
Yes, I have asked people to search things themselves. I don't deny that. I've done it several times.
How small of you changing the argument like that.
Yes.
Sure, if CO2 lead temperature rather than lagging, over the long term.
But it does.
Then be relieved.
Mitigation would be to do all we can to stop black carbon emissions. It is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels like CO2 is. It is scrubbed out easy enough. CO2 is not the problem of combustion. Unburned components of the fuel are.
Prove you already posted it, or rehash it for us. Is that so hard?
I really get tired of your lazy excuses for non-responsive posts. Considering your assumptions "already explained" without providing any links or quotation is a symptom of that laziness.
Yes. When their computer models start predicting reality on a regular basis, I will have more faith in their science.
deleted post
WC,
See?
Thanks
You and WH could learn a thing or two from RG. He actually posts some compelling arguments from his viewpoint.
I just think the AGW community tries to sell "the science is settled" and "the debate is over" a little too hard. (witness scare monger #1, Al Gore).
Ask yourself this: Why did the IPCC TWICE reduce it's model predictions in a 10-year period? ANSWER: It wasn't agreeing with reality.
Darrin I would bother engaging you the way RG does but every time I've done so in the past you never respond when presented with something that counteracts the oversimplified out of context you post. In the post above you post something completely out of context in order to discredit a theory. If you have a disagreement with the theory, then engage the science and the theory itself not what the IPCC has or has not done.
THAT is what science is about.
When you learn that, then maybe I will bother engaging you in a serious manner. I've learned my - and I suspect WH is coming from the exact same angle - lesson with you. So instead of telling us what we can learn maybe you should take your own advice? God knows WH and I have both put forth an exponentially greater amount of substance than you.
I learn things from RG all the time, but I'm an AGW agnostic. So disagreeable are the two main camps to me, that I'm more or less content to let others do the heavy lifting and heckle from the sidelines.
Guess it depends on what you mean by "AGW community," but in a broad way I can agree with that.
What would you have done, if reality kept showing up your model?
Stick with it?
Or would you examine, then revise, your various assumptions?
On this topic my contribution is nil. I drink too much and heckle the flow of play. Like I did back in my compe ive soccer days.
No kidding. I cannot wait for the 5th report, showing black carbon to contribute around 0.3 watts or so. I wonder if they'll fix solar, and end up reducting CO2 to below 1.0? It would surprise me if they reduced CO2 to where it belongs though, around 0.2 to 0.4.
So what you are saying here is that they revise their estimates based on new data.
Isn't that what real science is supposed to do?
Yes but then idiots like Darrin come back and use that as some kind of evidence that their models weren't exactly accurate and then demand you engage them in an actual debate.
You should spend some time watching Greg Craven's series of videos on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/user/wonderingmind42
He picks apart the whole debate in great detail with a fair perspective.
It starts with an interesting lecture series by a math professor who teaches in Colorado. He points out that it is a statistical impossibility for us to keep producing more and more coal/oil/gas etc to keep up with economic demand, then goes on to point out some of the depletion problems coming up in the coming decades for "fossil" fuels.
The fact that we will be producing/consuming less and less of the things that cause CO2 and other forms of pollution is something that a lot of the "alarmists" tend to miss. CO2 emissions will have to moderate at some point.
We are still producing exponentially more CO2 than we were 30 or 40 years ago though. The only real question we need to grapple with is what will happen as we go through the next 30 to 40 years.
That is where sound risk management comes into play, and it is the principles of risk management that completely blow away most "denier" arguments. The principles of risk management in their application to AGW is a reason why the Society of Actuaries, the people who study risk for a living for private industry, advocate doing something to limit CO2 and other greenhous gas emissions.
As Mr. Craven points out, it boils down to who to believe on the subject.
He also correctly points out that risk has TWO dimensions. Probability and magnitude.
The real ambiguity exists when it comes to probability, and that is where most of the real argument happens. It is also where you can start seperating the real scientists from the dogmatic quacks in both camps. The more you see statements of absolute certainty, the more you should turn on your sense of skepticism.
The thing that seals it for me though, is not the arguments about probability. We will get better data on that as time goes by, so we will get better at the probability estimates. The fatal weakness in the "denier" argument is that they are really really bad about the magnitude of the risks faced.
"Deniers" invariably will play down the potential risks posed by climate change, and play up the risks of doing something about it, and do so on the basis of extremely scant, outdated, and poor quality evidence.
"we will ruin the economy" by reducing CO2 emissions, they say. When asked to quantify that to any reasonable degree, they almost invariably hem, haw, and ad hominem. DarrinS, to his credit, gave me the best evidence I have seen to support the "ruin the economy" estimation of worst possible outcomes, but that was a study done in 1998, that really had some serious holes in it.
The thing that the "ruin the economy" arguments also completely fails to encapsulate is that we will be FORCED to emit less CO2 NO MATTER WHETHER WE ARE CHANGING OUR CLIMATE THROUGH EMISSIONS OR NOT, simply due to the coming depletion, mentioned at the beginning of this post.
This will change our economy anyways.
As any good cost accountant will tell you when considering options, you must ONLY weigh the differences in options, because that is the only logical way to get some quantification on costs/benefits.
Given that we MUST start emitting less CO2, and the only difference between courses of action (do something or do nothing) is WHEN, we are then left contemplating much more minor differences.
If your argument is "it will ruin our economy" then you are, in essence, saying that the coming depletion will also "ruin our economy", because declining fossil fuel supplies coupled with substantial increases in underlying demand will just as certainly drive prices up and change the way we get energy, just as surely as if we taxed carbon now.
We are faced with a choice similar to that of the fellow with the crappy old car who must choose between fixing the old one and buying a new one.
It is cheaper in the short run to fix the old one. Eventually, however the costs to keep it running will really add up and then it will definitely be cheaper to buy a new one.
The other variable not considered in this problem is that of income. If the fellows income is steady or growing, then going with the cheaper "fix it until it falls apart" option is probably better. He can save and put aside money for a down payment on a new car in the future and be better off.
Here comes the big BUT, if his income is likely to go down at some point in the future, he will be faced with having to replace his car at the exact time he can least afford it. He would be better off buying a new car and trying to get it paid off as quickly as possible before his income goes down.
The PROPORTION of our income that we have to spend on energy will have to rise, reducing our ability to pay the costs of switching over AND keep using energy.
All of this serves to essentially make the "they are not right about AGW" thrust of the "denier" camp irrelevant.
In my discussions here, as elsewhere, I liken it to a battle wherein red has completely outflanked blue, but blue keeps driving up the middle, oblivious to the unraveling of their entire order of battle.
The WSJ, especially since its takeover by Rupert Murdoch, has had a rather distinct shift in its editorial policy, and the article quoted was a straight up editorial, not a full-out article.
I trust the WSJ to tell me about business and market conditions, as those are a bit less open to playing politics with facts.
The sad thing for me is that I see something I really enjoy reading slowly succomb to groupthink in the manner that makes the Fox "news" network nearly useless when it comes to informing me about current events that don't involve the latest celebrity scandal.
They aren't there by any stretch, but I stopped reading the op-eds years ago.
The scientists themselves sure seem confident.
"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.... Our observing system is inadequate."
"I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data, but in reality, the situation is not quite so simple."
"The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK, it has, but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant."
"For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling."
I was thinking more of the formal analysis, not the non-issue "gotchas" of "Climategate".
Do you want me to start going through your, and WC's, posts and showing how you both consistantly fail to assign any such language to your pronouncements about what the data shows?
I could then contrast that with the IPCC's much more report stating "it is more likely than not" "probably" etc.
Quite frankly, reading through that selection, although it probably seems like some smoking gun to you, makes me feel a bit better about the whole affair. If that is the worst you could dredge up, it is pretty milquetoast.
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