Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

But Yvonne, you must agree that's a very unpersuasive argument. It strikes me of having pretty much the following form:

Premise 1: Well understood principles of physics and chemistry predict that the "sudden release" (over the time scale of a couple hundred years) of fossilized greenhouse gasses will slow the rate at which the Earth can radiate energy but not slow the rate at which it receives energy. The prediction correlates with the meteorological records (man made records, ice core records, tree ring records, the northward shifting of habitats etc.). The overwhelming majority of climatologists are persuaded by the evidence and the physical theory that indeed the Earth's climate is undergoing a period of heat imbalance due to the release of fossil carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses and is consequently seeking a new equilibrium which will result in noticeable climate shifts.

Premise 2. We get to decide what if anything we want to do about the climate change. Tax fossil fuel consumption? Encourage the invention and use of other forms of energy production? Forget about it? What to do about climate change is a separate issue, distinct from the issue that climate change is currently being driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

Premise 3. Some Hollywood movie stars endorse the idea that we should enact conservation measures to help offset if not equalize the current unequal rates at which the Earth gains and loses energy.

Premise 4. Some of those Hollywood movie stars (to which premise 3 refers) are not perceived as leading very conservation minded lives.

Conclusion: Therefore the whole theory of global warming is bogus.

You don't have to base your conclusions on what non-experts (whom who find irritating) tell you. You don't need premises 3 and 4. Indeed, premise 3 and 4 are absolutely irrelevant. You're smart enough to look into it yourself and arrive at a conclusion based on rational procedures.

Let’s examine the charge that Michelle Bachmann as made (and that has been repeated here) against climatologists. It is the charge that the model of global climate change endorsed by most climate scientists is a scam for raking the dough and getting rich on grant money. Obviously Michele doesn’t know how the grant system works.

The average university climatologist will make somewhere between $35000 to $100000 a year. Those near the top end of the range are the rare and considered the big guns of climate theory. Compare that to what the average oil company CEO makes. Compare it to what the secondary executive officers make.

What happens when a climatologist wins a grant?
The scientist never touches the money directly. The money goes through the university system and the grant funding agency. The scientist’s salary doesn’t go up. The grant does not supplement his or her salary. Instead the scientist draws his usual salary from the university, but the university reimbursed for that salary by the grant writing agency. See how that works. What else happens?

There’s usually equipment to by and people to hire. The climatologist will need to buy equipment and set up a lab. She will have to hire lab assistants and research assistants; i.e. jobs are created. They are typically filled by graduate students who work for very low stipends and free tuition. The climatologist research the equipment to buy, make out an order and submit the order to the grant funding agency. The agency will okay the order and pay the suppliers directly, or the university will pay the suppliers directly and then be later reimbursed by the grant funding agency. Similarly, the stipends for the labs and research assistants will be paid for my the university and the university will be reimbursed by the grant funding agency. It used to be the case that research involved a certain amount of travel. Of course it still does depending on your experiment. But it also involved traveling from one school to another to visit with colleagues in order to exchange ideas, advice, expertise etc. Skype has reduced the need for those sorts of one on one in-person conferences.

So far I don’t see a lot of money going to those alleged professorial swindlers. So what’s in it for the scientist who applied for and was awarded the grant?

Well here’s the deal. When not on a grant a research scientist is expected to teach, monitor the research of doctorate students and share in the executive responsibilities of the department and university. But when a research scientist has a grant, she will be relieved of some portion of these duties in order to work on the research for which the grant was awarded. That’s it. That’s the big deal. That’s what Michelle thinks scores are climatologists are falsifying their research for and risking their careers for...a diminished teaching load for a semester or two. Of course the real reward is the opportunity to explore a hypothesis, discover a tiny truth, push the boundaries of knowledge and perhaps contribute positively to the progress of science.

There is simply no big money to be made by faculty through the grant system. Now, as I already mentioned, there are some big guns who make in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars a year. They’ve acquired those salaries through competition with their peers. Universities want professors with big names to draw students. Also professors with big names have those big names because they’re good, and because they’re good they can get grants. If they can get grants, their salaries will be paid by the grant agency, not the university. So the university will offer the big guns bigger salaries. Not so difficult to follow is it?

The typical research professor will make way less than the typical provost. And at a large school, the typical provost will make way less than the football and basketball coaches. In academia, the money is in sports, not academia.

In regards to climate, if you want to follow the money, you need look no further than the oil, natural gas and coal interests. The corporations and cartels that drill, mine and refine.

The only thing I would add to Trish's last post, is that in the UK, we have something called the Research Assessment Exercise, which ranks departments and universities according to a set of indicators, one of which is the ability to attract research funding. Although universities still get a government subsidy, since 1981 the government has expected departments to be as self-sufficient as they can be, which makes the academics go out into 'the market' to find money for research projects. The hard sciences do well, because new research in chemistry in relation to the drugs/medicine business, computing software, engineering and so on -have practical benefits to industry.

Climate change is an oddball, being a toxic mixture of science and politics -and economics and social policy too if you want to extend it- there is a lot of money in it right now, comparable to the explosion of research on HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, so its the kudos of having a world-renowned Centre for the study of this or that, or an eminent much-quoted/cited professor -in a sense, it is a pity that the need to attract research funding can sometimes make it look like the search for that money is more important than the research its supposed to be doing, but thats academic life.

Spare a thought for some poor sod in an English department who wants research funding to write a book on Images of Transexual Desire in the English Novel Between Richardson and McEwan...and yet publishers still agree to waste paper printing books about Shakeseapeare, like there is anything new to say about him.

The best environmental song...

Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy me - YouTube

Naomi Klein Debunks Ethical Oil at Tar Sands Action - YouTube

well global warming is as popular as as a turd at a pool party in Aussie

Published on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 by The Hill (Washington, DC) EU Climate Chief ‘Shocked’ at US Debate

by Ben Geman

European Union climate chief Connie Hedegaard is disposing of diplomatic niceties when describing U.S. political battles over climate change.
“I’m shocked that the political debate in the U.S. is so far away from the scientific facts,” she said, according to The Copenhagen Post.
“When more than 90 percent of researchers in the field are saying that we have to take [climate change] seriously, it is incredibly irresponsible to ignore it. It’s hard for a European to understand how it has become so fashionable to be anti-science in the U.S.,” Hedegaard said in the Post account, which reprints comments she made to the Danish paper Politiken.
“And when you hear American presidential candidates denying climate change, it’s difficult to take,” she said.
Her remarks come amid a split in the GOP presidential field, where candidates including Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann dispute the mainstream scientific view that the planet is warming and human activities are a key factor.
The European Union in 2007 committed to cut its overall emissions by at least 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and has offered much steeper cuts if other major emitting countries agree to an international deal.
The EU has also implemented a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions from power plants, factories and other facilities.
In the U.S., climate change legislation collapsed on Capitol Hill last year, while Environmental Protection Agency plans to craft greenhouse gas standards for power plants and refineries are under attack by Capitol Hill Republicans and some major industry groups.
EPA recently said it would delay the unveiling of proposed emissions standards for power plants that had been slated for Sept. 30. The agency maintains that it's committed to issuing the rules.
Internationally, hopes have faded — at least, for now — for a binding emissions-reduction treaty any time soon to replace the Kyoto Protocol, although the last two major United Nations summits have led to more modest agreements on deforestation, climate finance and other matters.
The next big U.N. climate summit will take place in Durban, South Africa, in late November. “In Durban we will attempt to lay out a plan with deadlines for when we will arrive at a legally binding agreement that includes both the U.S. and China,” Hedegaard said.
President Obama on Sunday attacked Perry on his climate views, drawing a counterattack from the Texas governor's camp. The president also said it’s imperative that “our planet doesn’t reach a tipping point in terms of climate change.”

© 2011 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.

climate science is a lot of bull and the left loves to suck up this bull which is made up by the UN scamer's, the real problem is their are far to many people on this earth

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by russtafa

...the real problem is their are far to many people on this earth

---

Too many people demanding oil and gas, burning it as fuel and releasing the anciently sequestered, infrared opaque carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, preventing heat radiation from escaping into space and fucking the the oceanic/atmospheric balance of energy and causing a global climate shift. Haven't you noticed whole bands of flora and fauna moving poleward?

Seems to me russtafa would like the UN to implement incentives for nations to downsize their populations. We should start with putting a limit on the number of children bigots are allowed to have.

:rolleyes:yeah yeah i seriously doubt it

Dr. Ivar Giaever knew the score, and got tired off all the bullshit.

In 2010, Giaever was quoted by the New York Times as saying global warming “can’t be discussed, just like religion.”

http://dougsworld.files.wordpress.co...pg?w=600&h=399

Well Ivar (a one time quantum engineer, not a climate scientist) doesn't know what he's talking about because there are thousands discussions going on every day in refereed scientific journals. Poor Ivar just isn't holding his own in the tough and tumble of evidence-based discussion on climate. Not only is there discussion in scientific journals, but even the supposedly liberal New York Times by your own account interviewed Ivar and gave him a forum for his views. So what the fuck are you and he whining about??

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by russtafa

climate science is a lot of bull and the left loves to suck up this bull which is made up by the UN scamer's, the real problem is their are far to many people on this earth

---

Per capita consumption is the problem. I mean, the U.S. uses 25 percent of the world's energy resources.
It's a simple law of physics and chemistry: we can't have infinite growth on a finite planet. It can't happen. It's impossible.
In the 1960s U.S. tobacco firms commissioned their own studies and found that cigarette smoking was indeed addictive and harmful. But decided to obfuscate or conceal these facts from the public.
Same with climate change. In the 1990s the energy companies commissioned their own studies and found that climate change is real and is extremely serious.
I mean, the one's that want to conceal the truth about climate change are the oil companies because they stand to benefit.
Again, I find it astounding that people are rejecting science.
And, too, the interesting thing about belief is, well, everyone can believe what they want. One can believe the moon is made out of cheese. One would be wrong. But one can believe that.
I mean, 98 percent of climate scientists are saying it's real and very serious. How can we simply dismiss science?
I mean, what if Einstein were a climate scientist today. Would we all just dismiss him as being wrong and idiotic and involved in some conspiracy ??? -- ha ha! :)

science can be brought and that has already happened and you can write your own conclusion if you have enough money

Yes, science can and should be brought to bear on the problem of global climatic energy imbalance. And NO, science cannot be bought. See http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...&postcount=162

Oh ye of little faith...

We can fix all of this by just sacrificing a few virgins to the volcano gods.

science can be bought when these scientists are given grants and the ones that don't agree don't get their papers published or not given grants,it's that easy especially when the UN is sponsoring this scam

Russtafa I think you are approaching this issue from the side entrance -there is a growing 'market' in carbon trading and the prospect of money being raised as a carbon tax is making the eyes of some bankers and politicians roll with dollar signs like in a cartoon from years ago, but remember what the real purpose of these processes intends to achieve.

Global warming is scientific fact, and it is going to affect the planet over the next milenium: the precise details get lost in the various micro-climates which mean that for example, Scotland will have a different experience from Spain, but the fundamentals are not in doubt.

The critics who say we have always had climate change, ignore the key point -not that we have had Tropical Britain and a Little Ice Age since 1066 so what is all the fuss about -but yes, in terms of the history of the planet global warming is a localised event in time- problem is, we are living through it. The planet may have been warming without modern industry, but carbon emissions since the industrial revolution are one of the main causes of its acceleration.

And this is the key point about carbon tax and trading: it is not a scheme designed to make more money for bankers, it is supposed to go to the root of the problem and persuade industry that its long term costs will be reduced if they reduce emissions from their business; with benefits to society as a whole. The long term aim is to reduce emissions. You could be cynical and argue that if the world is running out of carbon-based energy sources like oil and gas, what's another 100 years? We will run out of it anyway, and I will be dead. But what will the quality of life be like for those who remain?

You then have a moral choice: to make a judgement about what the right thing is to do. An analogy would be the arguments over lead in petrol that flared in the 1970s -by that time lead had been used in petrol/gasoline for years to deal with 'knocking' in engines that caused wear and tear: but was also damaging people's health. Some said reducing and eliminating lead in petrol would crash the car industry: it didn't: lead was removed from gasoline and cars are now cleaner than ever before but still emit carbon which is an additional problem: but it can all be solved, and the short terms costs have been offset by long term profits. Same with clean air legislation that has transformed major cities from brown-orange balloons into urban environments where you can see the sky is blue (not the case in Beijing or Shanghai these days, esp around 3pm).

A new energy mix is already part of the energy profiles of Brazil and Germany. France invested heavily in nuclear power in the 1970s and now most domestic energy is generated fom nuclear sources and their prices are cheaper than the UK. Nuclear has its critics, for obvious reasons -but there is no single solution. You can run a home on solar power, but not Los Angeles: the future will not be as simple as it is today. Coal remains a common source of energy, particularly in China, but is expensive and inefficient to produce, and a heavy emitter of carbon.

Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning, money rather than the feasible alternatives to oil and gas, are driving this debate, and squabbles over the international agreements and who should pay or not pay or how much. We can plan now to gradually phase in alternative energies as oil and gas declines, or you can whistle in the wind and pretend its not happening; to me its what the Americans call a no brainer; choose the whistling option and you end up without a world, never mind a fried brain.

i look at it as a very high tax that our government admits will keep rising every year and which our supermarkets ,bottle shops,transport,hospitals will pass on to the public and most people wonder why when we contribute less than one percent of emissions of this planet but have to wear the brunt of this idiocy and we produce very cheap coal and of high quality and are one of the biggest exporters of coal .as for global warming i doubt it when i see no proof of this con job

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by trish

And NO, science cannot be bought.

---

Oh no the "science" or "preaching" if you prefer of man made climate change is always solid. NO one is twisting the results to sway their theology.

The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World showing an alarming 15% reduction of the Greenland ice shelf. Holy Crap!!! Oh wait, lets look at the facts. Reality is that less than 0.1% of the shelf has receded. Another example of the religious belief that is man made global warming. Your science was bought a long time ago..

you can really tell their criticism comes from a long career in science and the associated experience with how scientific work... works

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by muh_muh

you can really tell their criticism comes from a long career in science and the associated experience with how scientific work... works

---

Ouch that really hurt muh_muh. Ya and I can't tell when I'm sick either because I'm not a doctor, nor eat any of my own prepared food because I'm not a chief, forget about doing my own taxes goodness I'm not an accountant. I'm not a rocket scientist either, but I know the sky isn't falling, and the odds that the moon are going to collide with the earth are pretty slim.

theres a difference between seeing the obvious and understanding one of the more complex sciences
especially when youre blocking yourself through a filter of equal parts stupidity and ideology

also my point was that clearly neither of you understand how science and procuring grants works but im not the least bit surprised you didnt get that

Idiots have been known to poison themselves by taking homemade cures for psychosomatic ailments they didn't have. And a lot of would be chefs poisoned themselves and their guests because they just weren't conversant in the proper protocols for food preparation.

Lord Christopher Monckton seems to know what he is talking about he will debate any pro warming scientist that cares to debate him

Monckton is just a professional contrarian.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hippifried

Monckton is just a professional contrarian.

---

what the fuck hippie:confused:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by russtafa

what the fuck hippie:confused:

---

He is referencing the "potty peer" Christopher Monckton.

he seemed coherent to me

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by russtafa

he seemed coherent to me

---

And your area of scientific expertise is...?

Christopher Monckton is the son of the 2nd Viscount of Brenchley which means he can claim to be the 3rd, but at the time of his father's death Parliament had passed a law abolishing hereditary peerages so he is not entitled to sit in the House of Lords, he cannot vote, and the Lords have protested at Monckton's claims which he in turn says are granted by the Queen as a personal favour. In fact, there is nothing in English law to prevent anyone from claiming an honorific title, with the exception that if say, Russtafa wants to call himself Dr Russtafa Sydney, he should make it clear that he is not a medical doctor and that he has no legal right to practice as a doctor. He might not have a PhD either, but if he changes his name by deed poll, he could be Doctor, Professor, or Lord Russtafa of King's Cross.

Moncton read classics at Cambridge, and became associated in the 1970s with the nucleus of the Centre Policy Studies which Keith Joseph ('the Mad Monk') set up as a direct challenge to the Conservative Party Research Department, and which developed the anti-Keynesian, pro-monetarist-Hayeki-Miseresian slash and burn ideology that was the foundation of Margaret Thatcher's success -he was in her Downing St poliy unit by 1982.

He is politically to the right but certainly at the start did not deny the human element in global warming, but has consistently claimed the consequences will not be as dire and that any new taxes are anathema. He has moved further to the right by becoming a prominent member of the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP argue that all of Britain's woes are caused by multiculturalism, immigration, and our memberhsip of Europe even though its leader Nigel Farage is married to a German and is the only elected UKIP member, sitting in, you guessed it, the European Parliament.

I once had a ridiculous exchange of views with a UKIP die hard on the usual issues and eventually got him to admit Britain had really started to go downhill as a consequence of the Roman invasion, even though Julius Caesar is not normally cited as the villain. I have little time for Budicaa of the Iceni, and much as I like forests and the colour blue, I don't intend to spend my sunset years running around Sherwood Forest wearing nothing but blue paint in search of a wild pig or some berries for my supper -luckily most of the British electorate doesn't want to either.

The point being that a lot of this so-called debate isn't actually about the climate, or the causes and effects of global warming: its about taxes, government, and who makes policy -by the time that governments come to a universal agreement, we could all be toast.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by trish

And your area of scientific expertise is...?

---

i have a brain and can think for myself same as you i presume

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by trish

And your area of scientific expertise is...?

---

he saw a universtity from the inside... once

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by muh_muh

he saw a universtity from the inside... once

---

He knew someone who paid taxes.. once

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by muh_muh

he saw a universtity from the inside... once

---

same as most people on this site with an opinion

Don't make fun of russtafa, he had actually had a thought...once; but it turned out to be somebody else's thought, and it was wrong.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by trish

Don't make fun of russtafa, he had actually had a thought...once; but it turned out to be somebody else's thought, and it was wrong.

---

so say's miss know it all:dead:

Watching the Arctic melt, I realise apathy must be frozen out

by Laurie Penny - 24 September 2011

We can choose abject complicity, or we can decide that it's not too late to build a better world.
http://images.newstatesman.com/artic...4_arctic_w.jpg The Fjord of Ilulissat in Greenland, which has lost 1,500 billion tonnes of ice since 2000, Photograph: Getty Images

There's nothing like a glacier crumbling into the sea in front of your eyes to remind you that climate change is more than an abstract reason to recycle egg boxes and wine bottles.
Right now, I'm writing from a small ship's cabin in one of the most isolated, desolate places on earth: the northern tip of Svalbard in the high Arctic, where I have come on an expedition, part of the point of which was to see what I've just seen. Which was a shelf of translucent blue ice the height of a house falling into the water like wet cake.
It's not that I didn't believe in climate change before this. On the contrary: I am of the background and generation that grew up in the mid-1990s with the notion of environmental destruction as an inevitability.
I was raised on the animation FernGully: the Last Rainforest and traumatic colouring books full of sad baby seals and herons choking on plastic bags. This gentle indoctrination was supposed to motivate us to grow up and save the planet, but by the time we were old enough to object, the forests were disappearing and the oilfields burning fast enough for it all to seem too late.
I now realise that, even before the Copenhagen Summit 2009 put paid to the prospect of a green international deal, I had decided that there was nothing I could do. At some point, I decided that my special fight was simply to make sure, to the best of my limited ability, that whatever society is left after the floodwaters settle is as fair and free as possible. I have this luxury, of course, because I grew up in a hilly place in England and my house is not going to be underwater for a while yet.
This, for the generation that grew up after the collapse of communism, is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a bonfire. When I tried to explain the sense of finality to a friend who is old enough to have collected vinyl records before they were niche, he laughed at me. "Don't talk to me about Armageddon," he said, "when I was your age, we had the bomb to worry about."
The bomb, however, was a very different apocalypse from the inevitable, collective entropy of climate change and it demands an entirely different sort of complicity.
The greatest threat to the future of humanity is now not political brinkmanship, but paranoid indifference: the certainty that the future is both finite and short and that all we can do is burn what little of the remaining money we have and hope civilisation outlasts us.
This is a terribly foolish way to live. The anarchist thinker David Graeber writes in Debt: the First 5,000 Years that in response to the blinding obviousness of economic and ecological world buggeration, "the most common reaction - even from those who call themselves 'progressives' - is simply fear. We can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn't be even worse." Graeber adds: "About the only thing we can imagine is catastrophe."
There is a bitter paradox to this apathetic fatalism that somehow incorporates its own denial. The abstract enormity of climate change and economic meltdown encourages a sort of helpless liberal Calvinism, complete with little rituals of composting orange peel and purchasing sustainable lingerie, as if such devotions might somehow spare us . Which, in a way, they will - if we are lucky enough to live in the cosseted bourgeois west, where you have to be flown out to witness a melting glacier to appreciate the cold reality.
Of course, many millions of people don't need to be told that burning half a trillion tonnes of fossil fuels has had some dodgy consequences for humanity.
At the same time as I'm on a boat watching the Arctic ice-shelf contribute theatrically to rising global sea-levels, hundreds have died in flooding in Pakistan, and over five million have been affected.
There comes a point when you have to make a choice. When a colossal wall of thousand-year-old-ice explodes right in front of you, with a noise like a very large bomb falling very far away, and you feel the chill sting of spray on your face as the ice is eaten away by human greed, you realise that a choice is still possible.
We can choose abject complicity, or we can decide that it's not too late to build a better world. My boots are still wet, so I'm for the latter.

The Arctic is going to be the focus of intense political battles over the next 10 years, although I suspect the protagonists will not be the Arctic states, but those states and environmental activists in Greenpeace and similar bodies. The Arctic region's first nations have already had their lives turned upside down and inside out, the region is amongst the dirtiest per sq km in the world because for decades it was used as a global rubbish dump, a nuclear weapons testing site, and those vanity projects when some jaded sportsman or out of work comedian take a dog sled to the North Pole along with a camcorder. As for Pakistan, if they had a superior water management system than they have today, they could harness the power of water and control it, instead of being at its mercy -there are solutions to everything, there is no need for this cultural despair in the face of crumbling icebergs.

:dead:fuck i will have to tell my ex to sell her waterfront property to me extra cheap lol