[...] the same big oil that is raking in tons of money via ethanol driven by warming scare.You know, I //really// do wonder how long it is going to be until the Peak Oil people realize that all they are accomplishing is to fatten the profit margins of the oil companies...
Seriously. It's obscene, how willfully ignorant the "Peak Oil Leftists" (for lack of a better term; one is //truly// wanting. I despise the 'left/right divide' logic.) are keeping themselves on the subject of the history -- past, present, and economically projected -- of oil production.
The more I look at it, the more I continue to see a vitriolically vehement anti-growth agenda coming out of the 'political left' -- one solely equalled by the anti-individualism agenda coming out of the 'political right'.
Both are nauseating.
I fear that they never learn because it is new people committing the same old fallacies. Most never learned from the mistakes of others and have to make them all over again for themselves.
But it is incredible how the Left is lining the pockets of Big Oil, or Big Energy as it is today. They give them subsidies, tax breaks not afforded others, force people to buy products from them, etc. The Big E. sector knows how to use politicians to redistribute the wealth from the working people to the corporates. And Leftwing politicians and activists are helping them do it. But this has been the case going back to the push for anti-Trust where Big Business and Progressives ganged up to reduce competition and regulate the market to put up and coming companies at a disadvantage compared to the big boys already in business.
This is a bit like the Prohibition days when "Baptists and bootleggers" found themselves on the same political side.
Or when they deregulated the telephone companies in America. The loudest complaints came from lefties and...the telephone companies, who enjoyed the legal monopoly.
There will always be Orren Boyles out there. The problem is making sure they don't get the government on their side.
Lefties are morons....need more be said?
James, you are correct. Of course the same could be said for conservatives, just more so.
Assuming for the sake of argument that this carries over into people actually working in climatology (and it doesn't; ask yourself why the AGU's statement on the matter--or the IPCC's!--is non-controversial...), what is the implication?
Would you say that it leaves people who don't bother to wrap their heads around the science free to follow their whims? As in "Despite what the science says, I say X".
One really needs to be careful in treating this sort of material.
"But 45 per cent blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that ‘the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.’”
That 45 percent can very well be counted on the AGW "side". Unless one is an expert in the field--I've seen experts do it skeptically and soundly, but sure can't take such a strong stand myself--dismissing natural influences is foolhardy. The question also leaves open the question, "what are we talking about?" It's rather clear that non-anthropogenic effects are the dominant causes of year-to-year changes, just as it is rather clear from attribution studies that they cannot explain the overall trend.
Diving in further, the question of whether or not the "debate" is settled has an ambiguous referent. From the scientific perspective, the discussion is still very much open and papers are still coming out about attribution. What is being discussed, however, is not the same thing as this sham debate invented by the popular press. Nobody in his right mind (not even Scaffeta and West, who have been knocked out of the park) arguing whether or not Man is or will cause a problem at all.
Moreover, there is still no attribution study supporting the denialist claim. Case closed: the scientific debate continues, but has left the pop debate in the dust. That means that, categorically, there is still a debate, but that the "AGU is a hoax or a sloppy error" folks have no leg to stand on.
One must wonder, too, why the opinion of 1000 members of APEGGA is treated as anything but slightly more informed than that of the Average Joe. These are practicing geologists, not academic scientists, let alone people working on climatology! This is one step away from the Oregon Petition crowd pretending that computer-scientists have any bearing on a consensus of climatologists.
Of course, none of this is discussed in your post. So much for skepticism!
See also:
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2...-survey-
of.html
Perhaps we should survey bank employees on matters claimed to be the consensus of the economics profession?
The poll responses of Alberta scientists doesn't knock a dent in the "scientific consensus argument.
I know it’s lazy/sloppy to use Wikipedia as a reference, but check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sci...g_organizations for a list of national and international scientific organizations who’s official position is that human actions are very likely the cause of global warming. The article also notes: “With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate.”
If you really want to attack the scientific consensus, you might want to look at Alex Cockburn's criticism of peer review: http://www.spiked-online.com/ind...ks_article/
4357
Or perhaps use big pharma's manipulation of the FDA re: anti-depressants as a case study:
http://www.badscience.net/
Ben: Can you site one properly done poll of scientists which shows there is a consensus?
I don't mean statements from organizations. I've been involved in too many organizations to know how statements often reflect an activist minority against a less activist majority. I mean an actual poll, or survey, with properly worded questions sent out to a significant number of people in the field which shows there is a consensus for the following:
1. There is global warming.
2. It is catastrophic.
3. It is primarily caused by humans.
I also await a list of what weather phenomenon doesn't indicate global warming. If you know of such a list I'd love to see it.
Way to move the bar cls. "Scientific consensus" doesn't mean the majority of individual scientists believe something, it refers to institutional positions. You can argue the validity of scientific consensus, but it's very difficult at this point to claim that there is not a scientific consensus.
I don't know how many people make the claim that there is a scientific consensus that global warming will be "catastrophic." I don't come across that claim often. Mostly I come across it as a straw man argument from global warming doubters.
I do, however, come across the claim that it will cause major problems, which I believe is supported by the position papers of scientific organizations.
Klintron: There is no such thing as a collective brain. You think institutions exist separate from the scientists who are members. What absurdity. A scientific consensus would be the consensus of scientists not of organizations with their petty politics subject to capture by minority activists. Of course the Left pushes this idea of consensus because they are the activists who capture organizations and then pretend to speak for all the members.
If warming is not catastophic then what is the concern? Is it a minor irritation? If so then surely the cost of the measures to solve a minor problem don't justify the solution. The only justification for trillions in costs is a catastrophy. And if you haven't heard such alarmist statements then you are not paying attention.
We have seen claims that it will kill the polar bears, cause droughts and starve millions to death, increase tropical diseases killing millions more, submerge entire nations under sea water, and that is just the start.
cls - "You think institutions exist separate from the scientists who are members."
Not any more than you imply they do above. I think you are correct to question whether position papers accurately represent the positions of individual members. However, "scientific consensus" is traditionally gaged by these institutional positions. To claim that there is no consensus, when we've reached the point that there is no national or international organization presenting a dissenting view (a poll of regional scientists hardly qualifies), doesn't make any sense.
You have a hypothesis (one I think it would be worth someone following up on): that if you polled the individuals that are members of the various scientific institutions you would find that the majority opinion of scientists does not match the official positions of their respective institutions. But at this point, the only evidence you have to support this hypothesis is your personal experience with organizations (my apologies in advance if you have posted more evidence of this hypothesis in a previous post that I have not read). Global warming believers can point to the body of position papers as evidence of a consensus. What can you point to to indicate that none such consensus exists?
"If warming is not catastophic then what is the concern? Is it a minor irritation? If so then surely the cost of the measures to solve a minor problem don't justify the solution. The only justification for trillions in costs is a catastrophy. And if you haven't heard such alarmist statements then you are not paying attention."
I would think there's some granularity between "minor irritation" and "catastrophe." I would also think there's some granularity between between being a global warming doubter and being a global warming alarmist. FWIW, the conclusion I've reached as a non-scientist from the information I've seen thus far is: there is a consensus that global warming is occurring, that it is caused by humans, and that the effects will be negative. I don't think there's any consensus on how bad it will be, or what, if anything, we can do about it. I think the Kyoto Protocol is flawed, and some form of carbon tax would likely be preferable. I think the ethanol fiasco, and the rather large amounts of private funding for alternative fuel research, is good evidence that governments should not fund or subsidize alternative fuel research. (I have in the past passively supported both Kyoto and government funding for alternative fuels, but I have changed my opinion.)
A poll? Of, say, people who've published climatological research in the past decade? No, haven't seen one, and since I'm not made of money, I'm not about to conduct one myself.
As for society statements, consider it to mean something if there is no real dissent from statements such as the AGU's; scientists are an easily irritable lot and don't like having words put in their mouths.
The AGU holds its Fall Meeting in San Francisco every year. If you're still in Benicia, perhaps you could drop in and ask?
There certainly have been studies done of hundreds of scientific articles on warming which then rated them to see if they agreed with the "consensus" theory or not. Only a minority were clearly in favor of the consensus. I have not posted on such studies because I fear that they are too subjective and that such a study is too easily manipulated.
Certainly the IPCC statements have created some rather heated dissents with scientists resigning in anger because of it.
There was a report by the Senate EPW Committee, last December, listing over 400 prominent scientists who dispute global warming. (Disclosure: I am one of them.)
As Klintron indicated, peer review has severe problems. There was a Classically Liberal blog post exemplifying that, last May. The post was based on a (peer reviewed!) paper that I had published. (There were a couple of critical comments there; I saw them late, and did not rebut them, but if CLS would like, I would be happy to do so.)
I recently published a paper that described another example of a problem with peer-reviewed global-warming research. There are many more examples that could be given. (I chose those two in part because they could be easily understood by people without specialist scientific training.)
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