CastleHills Anonymous

How can I get a name like "Lord Lawson of Blabby" ??? Is that for real? LOL

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

J_Mortimer Anonymous

There is a great enty at scienceblogs that discusses why the "Global Warming Swindle" is a swindle. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03... It give great links to more substantive information including the "Real Climate" which is a great website for scientifically minded people to get their teeth into the real issues of climate.

Jim: Its all well and good to talk about "debate" and the "other side" but climate change deniers of this ilk in "swindle" are to be regarded no better than psychics, creationists, and other anti rational folks. They are making the same intellecualt errors. They try to gain their ground not by established methods of peer review and scientific skepticism and honesty but by propoganda, lie by ommision and deliberate distortion of regular folks lack of knowledge.

Carl Wunsch, a Physical Oceanography professor from MIT with a long career who was in the "Swindle" film you mention, claims he was distorted in the film.

His public statement about appearing in the film, a link to which I have posted below, begins with this statement:

"I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component."

This is not the view, of himself that gets presented by the film maker of the "swindle" film as he states later:

"In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making---which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

He goes on to discuss the response to his complaints about the film:

"[UK] Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of 'polemics'. There is nothing in the communication we had (much of it on the telephone or with the film crew on the day they were in Boston) that suggested they were making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading."

Jim you seem a guy willing to listen to the "other side" then I would presume that you would be more careful to dump such misleading sources int he future and get a real education on climate.

Wunsch's letter is here: http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/paperso...

A link to a great source for laymen: http://www.realclimate.org/

Its great that Mayor Miller signed the agreement as it is great that others mayors from Richardson, Dallas, Frisco, Coppell, Arlington are doing so along with others. Parts of the agreement give focus to things that have to with more than just climate change including clean vehicle programs (which help air quality) and energy efficient buildings which save the taxpayer money.

J

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

worf Anonymous

The climate change argument is silly. Given the present human population - we simply can't afford any surprises...so ultimately we must learn to control all aspects of climate and build "insurance" for when our efforts fail. This implies carbon control, widespread nuclear energy, artificial food production and really artificial weather control.

Anyone opposing such "drastic" measures should contemplate this: "If the climate zigs past our capacity to correct - who will they ask to die first?". These choices will be soon upon us if we fail to act.

"Mother nature" will wipe us out if we allow her.

The world will be at it's maximum "natural" human carrying capacity within 50 years....

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

worf Anonymous

This is progress?

The city of Carrollton already has in place a very successful recycling program.

Recycling costs far more energy. This is fact. Concerned about climate change? Then don't recycle. Recycling is a disfuctional religion.

http://www.sho.com/site/schedules/pro...

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

J_Mortimer Anonymous

So you want me to take Las Vegas showmen (with political ideologies no less) as a scientific authority?

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

J_Mortimer Anonymous

Brian,

I made no comments about anything being one sided. I was quoting the MIT scientist who apparently was duped into appearing on the TV production in question.

Are you suggesting that Carl Wunsch didnt make the comments in question? My counter argument was specifically about Dr Wunsch in connection with The "swindle" production.

You can take the time to understand the issues from the source given (or any other source given) or you can attack the source without providing substantive response. Its up to you.

J

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

J_Mortimer Anonymous

"So when I question one group's motives and reasoning then that's an attack, but that's not what's going on if you question a group, right?"

I have no idea what this means as it has nothing to do with anything discussed.

If you are going to mistake suggestions of outside sources with endorsement and not provide substantive response (i.e. "Cliff the Mailman from that Cheers TV show") then there is really no point in discussing any issue or any issue. Comments like those indicate that discussion is, for any practical purpose, finished.

As far as RealClimate (which is not one person but a group of people who, in fact, don't agree on many things and wherein YOU can participate) being devoted to the "hockey stick" that is patently false. I am guessing at this point evidence isn't going to convince you.

Did or did not Dr Wunsch make the claims he did? Does this or does this not point the believability of the "Swindle" production? With this in mind what can we say further about it?

Actually in a sense UK Channel 4 allowing the Swindle swindle to be shown is a good thing. It gives two good examples to discuss methods of rhetorical mediums when we toss in Inconvenient Truth. With IT, one can and should criticize certain facts about it. However, that is not a criticism of its rhetorical methodology. With Swindle you have the opposite. You have certain "facts" presented with the intention of leaving out what geophysicists and climate scientists consider relevant including a case when one prominent scientist claims to be outright deceived. In comparing these two pieces of media, this is EXACTLY the same kind of rhetorical fight that goes on in other circles such as creation vs evolution. In the case of evolution/AGW the scientific community tends to provide information and has a tendency to stay away from general public rhetoric and therefore the message gets carried often (but not always) by non-scientists. With creation/anti-AGW you tend to have non-scientists (more so that scientists) using means outside the scientific establishment and using rhetorical methods instead of scientific ones.

As for Jim, I see the anti-AGW crowd as far more resembling, inamush as intellectual mistakes are concerned, pseudo-science like creationism, crystal healing, water divination, UFOs, and even holocaust denial. AGW is supported by hundreds of scientific papers and the entire geophysics community except for a handful of holdouts in the old paradigm and even they are becoming fewer as they shift position. (Robert Lindzen being only one example.) The anti-AGW crowd is usually (as is expected) non-scientists pushing their views through non-peer reviewed methods and attempting to CONVINCE rather than ESTABLISH more fundamental bases by EVIDENCE.

In my lifetime we will probably look back on the anti-AGW crowd in the same way we look back on Freudian analysis, repressed memory theory, and smoking-cancer link denial. I could be wrong certainly since the motivations for denying AGW are often political or personal rather than scientific and those border on religious (if not being outright religious) which are very difficult to dislodge as we see with creationism.

It hardly matters which course scientific model you use. You can use Kuhnian revolutions, Popperian falsification, Lakatos' rational theory or even Feyerabend's anarchistic theory. In every case, the anti-AGW crowd fits the model of either being the dying old men, or those operating outside science.

As one geoscientist I met from UT-Austin said when I asked about if there was general agreement in the geophysics community about AGW he responded by saying "There is not good agreement. There is an extraordinary agreement. What they disagree on is details." This, yet again, is exactly the same as the creation-evolution game wherein a biologists comment about the details of evolution and this is conflated by creationists as a reason to toss out evolution. This happens in holocaust denial. See Shermer's "Denying History" wherein holocaust deniers use statements by legitimate historians to "disprove" the holocaust. And as noted this is exactly what the producers of the Swindle did to Dr Wunsch. The parallels here are quite strong.

This is about more than whether or not AGW is true or not. Its about how one comes to conclusions -- any conclusion -- about things in the world and its about the methods one uses.

Unlike you Jim, I don't expect these kind of fights to go away. I expect true (un)believers to stick to their faith and I expect that others will pop up human nature being like it is.

J

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

worf Anonymous

(Shrugging)Your descendants will need that carbon to keep the glaciers at bay someday. But right now - it may be true that we're juicing the climate more than we should. Perhaps we need a planetary central bank for greenhouse gases?

Somehow the current arguments over climate change seem antiseptic ....like the participants really have no skin in the game. That's not the case, so wouldn't simple prudence demand that you take certain steps to "avoid all possibility" of unintentional manmade climate change? A side benefit...if some volcano blows and plunges us into volcanic winter - our nuclear fueled production systems just keep right on chugging.

Have you ever stopped to think that with a humanity of billions we no longer have any margin for error? Who will voluntarily "get off" should the world's food production capacity decline below population sustaining levels?

Addressing climate change forces us to deal with problems which should have been nailed long ago....It will be good for us :)

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

bluesdfw Anonymous

All the hot air about global warming, or not, is probably a major contributing factor to the process. Personally, I think it's a good thing. We've only been in an interglacial period for the past 12,000 years or so. The Wisconsin glacial, which preceeded our present, relatively warm climate, lasted about 80,000 years. Before that, the glaciers descended many more times, then retreated, over the last 2 million years or so. Thank goodness all that wooly mammoth flatulence warmed the earth and made those pesky glaciers retreat from Kansas and Ohio.

Anyone who wants to live in a teepee in the dark to save the planet is certainly welcome to it. Just don't tell me I have to do it. Remember, when Houston floods, it will mean the beaches will be closer.

While everyone else frets pointlessly about keeping the ocean from reclaiming Florida, a small band of us will be doing the opposite by driving gas guzzling SUVs, cranking down the AC in the summer, and eating meat at every opportunity. If it comes down to a choice of the ocean rising or the ice sheets returning, I'll take the ocean any day. We've got to keep those glaciers away at any cost.

Wanna have some fun? Go to wiki or google up "Pleistocene". Read about the last 2 million years of geologic history then ponder the tempest in a teapot that is global warming.

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

J_Mortimer Anonymous

Blair,

The comments were not entirely directed at you. The comments were inteneded to use the Swindle as a convenient example because it was brought up in the discussion.

The basic questions revolve around what I said in the last messge: "This is about more than whether or not AGW is true or not. Its about how one comes to conclusions -- any conclusion -- about things in the world and its about the methods one uses."

Making claims that RealClimate is "one sided" and demand an all out refutatation of the "hockey stick" is intellectually unsound.

First, there is little wrong with being one sided when the evidence favors a position. Are historians one sided when they say Caeser did indeed cross the Rubicon? Are physicists when they promote quantum theory of matter and none other? Are physicians one sided when they promote the germ theory of disease?

Second, the "hockey stick" comments are a red herring and a straw man. RealClimate's FAQ on myths about the "hockey stick" which lists a"Myth #0" (which I presume they do to emphasize that it is fundamental.) It says "Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the 'Hockey Stick' ..." In other words, they list your favored claim about their views as a the most fundamental myth they confront. Their explanation then goes on to use the magic words "number of independent lines of evidence" referring to other lines of evidence besides the hockey stick. Now those of you playing along at home may have not caught those magic words or its more likely those of you playing along at home never visited their site anyway. (It should be noted that the hockey stick is itself not evidence at all but a catch phrase to describe one set of evidence. It is not a theory in and of itself. Attacking it is like attacking that evolution on the grounds of that cartoonish drawing where progressively complex versions of primates are shown left to right.)

Nonetheless, those are "magic words." Why do I say that? When a theory that is dependent on the truth values of historic propositions (be it a scientific one like evolution, or climate theory, or be it a pure human historical theory like how the stories of the New Testament were developed) a theory is generally favored if one can produce multiple lines of independent evidence in its favor. This is why certain historical based theories are considered stronger than others. Evolution will not likely be displaced by a single historical observation inconsistent with it. Likewise for Anthropomorphic Global Warming at this point.

One reason the IPCC in its 2007 report uses stronger language to say "very likely (greater than 90% likely) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations" is because more scientists are convinced by multiple lines of evidence.

J

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )