Global warming: not a question of science but political influence

So let's go with the only options we have, and stop arguing about it. Go nuclear, use wind and geothermal even if it inconveniences the rich of Nantucket and elsewhere, and start building those big solar heating plants out in the desert.

Even if we do this, is any one else going to do this? No...at least not enough to make a difference.

I'm all for going for energy indepenence. Even if the Global Warming people are proven to be victims of the greatest scam in two millenia, at least we'll be well positioned for the next war for water.

You know I love you, yt, but damn it I need to stop clicking on your threads right before I go to sleep. Awareness isn't even enough anymore. What do we do? What can we, as an individual, do? I try to do everything I can to make my carbon footprint as small as possible, but that is merely a drop in the bucket that is instantly negated by some asshole that refuses to even put in an energy-saving lightbulb because it "looks ugly."

...but yt, considering the sort of time-frame scientists think we're on, do you see enough people being awoken to be able to affect the massive changes required in time?

...do we deserve extinction for our collective hubris, whether we may be personally 'awake' or not?

It's worth a shot isn't it? I don't get this "We're all fucked. We deserve it." attitude I've seen people have. It's a bullshit excuse to not have to actually do anything. If there is a problem and you feel you should/can do something about it, do it. Don't go into some melodramatic tailspin where you, for example, stop fucking in order to help keep humanity from continuing on.

Allow ideas you hold in your heart to proliferate, and promote things that will help the causes you believe in while doing them yourself. If it's all futile in the end, well, them's the breaks. Would you rather have sat on your ass watching American Idol or something equally benign?

No but I think you're underestimating some of the real and actual misanthropia some feel. Sure you can wave it away as a lazy response, but what if you really fucking dislike humanity as a plague on this fair planet anyway?

The planet will be fine no matter what happens, we're not trying to save the planet, we're trying to save ourselves.

As a self-described misanthrope myself, I understand that people can legitimately believe in such things, but that doesn't mean I'm cool with it. No matter how much I get mad at how stupid the world gets around me or how detached I feel, I would never want to disconnect the way some of these people (claim to) have.

Also, I completely recognize the fact that these very people are attempting to promote and engage in activities and ideas that they believe in themselves, but so am I in chastising such ideas and activities. I can't fault someone for having their beliefs, but I can for what they are and why.

Obviously there's a level of respect. People are welcome to think, and to a legislated extent, do whatever they want. All I'm saying is, in a situation where somebody starts talking this kind of defeatist or completely detached from humanity attitude, I feel obligated to espouse my perspective.

Well, some try to do both or the other. I'm sorry, but I don't get what your point is here in this context.

Also, I wasn't necessarily talking directly to you. I was responding to your seemingly rhetorical question.

I did watch Who Killed the Electric Car? last week and it absolutely infuriated me. I'll have to check out The 11th Hour. Your Matrix analogy was spot-on as far as I'm concerned, yt. Once you wake up to what the reality is, your first inclination is to freak out and go into self-denial. Beyond that initial meltodown, I'm glad I'm no longer ignorantly rushing to face my doom like a lemming.

I wrote my congressman after the whole Scotter Libby getting pardoned fiasco. Time to bug him again.

I want to rant a little about something and this is as good a place as any for it. Sorry, yt.

But what's the deal with all these idiots on the internet latching on to every crackpot coming out with some bullshit theory trying to disprove global warming? Further more why are they all Americans? I spend, both because of my job and because of my hobbies, a huge amount of time online and whenever some bullshit institute starts doing party tricks with statistics to disprove the global warming theory, the only people falling over themselves to agree are Americans. What the hell? Are the American media downplaying this subject so much? I'm not saying that all Americans are like this. It's just that everyone of these guys turns out to be American. Could someone please try to explain this to me?

I think things are changing rapidly and the future outlook looks positive, specially due to oil prices. See, at the end of the day what hurts people is the wallet and the best thing to happen to the cause for the environment is increasing oil prices.

Suddenly, not only consumers, but corporate interests are extremely bullish on alternate energy sources. I don't like to talk about my work, and yt knows what company that is, but we've been making a killing with wind technology and there is nothing that motivates this and other type of research more than profits.

Interestingly I went to a talk at an undisclosed corporate research center and a very prominent customer basically said reaffirmed yt's point here. The biggest problem in this issue is legislation and the road block that is the lobbyists. At the same time people also need to be realistic about alternate energy sources, and understand that most of them still don't scale to meet our needs (or even if we realistically reduce our needs) and there is still a lot of research that needs to be done.

But at the end of the day, there is big money to be made in alternative ways to generate energy, and you can bet the bank that corporate interests are after this.

I'd guess that the reason why Americans are so quick to latch onto global warming doubts is pretty simple. They've grown up in an American moment in history that seems to be fading on many fronts. The previous status quo had done very well for America and Americans, and they think acknowledging that it caused a climate crisis is both an indictment of their prosperity and a surrender to the idea that it isn't coming back.

Not that they think think about it explicitly in those terms, but I think that's the root of why we're eager to jump at anything that tells us this isn't really happening.

It doesn't help that many of us have already survived many other cries of "wolf" during the last 20 years. In the 1980s, everyone was so sure we were going to die in a nuclear holocaust. Then there was Y2K, the Superflu that was supposed to wipe out 80 percent of humanity, etc. We've been so abused by the media that we don't know what to believe anymore, and just assume everyone is lying.

I don't think most Americans doubt Global Warming is happening (or even that man has some sort of impact on it), but there are some very outspoken people who DO doubt it very much. I wouldn't use a broad brush to paint all Americans as doubters, though.

I blame Penn and Teller, mostly.

Sure, and there's the natural inclination to want to deny the end of the world, but I was talking about distinctively American reasons for denial.

My cousin is working at a 'green' start-up, a carbon-trading firm. He's quite the number cruncher and sees huge potential in this market. Bigger than oil, he says. Of course the only roadblock to this market taking off (and stimulating the entire alt-energy industry) is the fact that the US has not signed Kyoto or something similar.

I think there are two other things going on here:

1) Discussions of Global Warming always end up pointing the finger at the consumption society, the SUVs etc etc. The implication is always that America should feel guilty for being rich and having cars etc. And wrecking the planet. The problem is, Americans as a people don't do guilt. They perceive a lot of the prescriptions of the Global Warmists as envy and Anti-Americanism.

2) Americans also don't do sacrifice, which is how the debate is framed. Jimmy Carter, as President, addressed the nation while dressed in a sweater, and told the American People they had to suck it up and turn up their thermostats, and get used to an era of limits. Guess who didn't win the next election?

More precisly, there was the Club of Rome, which predicted in the early 1970's that oil would run out by 1980. Also in the 1970's scientists were warning that the planet was about to enter a new Ice Age.

What kind of excuse is the fact that, so far, predictions about oil running out have been overly pessimistic?

I mean, its not a case of "they were wrong, maybe we will have oil forever after all", its a case of "they were wrong, maybe we can stick our collective heads in the sand and squeeze by with ignoring the FACT that there isnt unlimited oil on this planet for another decade"

At some point, Oil is gone. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in 10 years, maybe in 100 or more... who knows. But as a matter of fact, at the very least it is going to become ever more pricey, ever more a reason for aggression, wars, and most importantly, its never going back to what it was in the 70s.

This is like pushing off a visit to your dentist because he may have to scrape at a tooth a little. You push it off 2-3 years, then it ll hurt a damn sight more, for the same effect, AND you had aching teeth along the way.

Somehow I would hope mankind isnt a collective case of this behaviour. I mean, my chinchillas are smarter than that.

No they weren't. I think Newsweek published an article once that implied they did, but the article was not thorough.

Your argument doesn't work anyway. Less than 100 years ago astronomers thought the galaxy was all there was; they were clearly wrong. Does that mean current astronomers must also be wrong about a given topic?

Are you sure about that? I'm not necessarily saying there was a mass movement in the scientific community or even much of a debate, but I have heard of some brouhaha about a potential new Ice Age.

EDIT: From Googling it, it was a little more than that one Newsweek article, but still not anything near a movement and one of the lead scientists apparently denounced his earlier theory when he realized an error he had made while putting it together.

Yes, I am sure. I'm not saying no one ever broached the subject, but it was not prevailing theory and neither was there, as you pointed out, much of a debate on the subject. I don't think people take the mid-century cooling from particulate matter or the long-term cycles of warmth and cold in their proper contexts.

And it's certainly not beneath some of the liars out there these days to poison the public discourse by laying out misrepresentations of the facts for the honest-yet-uninformed to come across either.

Well, that's the point: it's a debate. As more evidence is gathered and evaluated, different conclusions are drawn.

My original post pointed out some reasons why many (not all, many) Americans have not bought into the Global Warming meme. When you have multiple sources of information saying one thing one year, the opposite a few years later, it is not shocking that people might be suspicious and not be willing to upend their entire civilization, just to conform to the current opinion on climate change.

Understand. I believe that the evidence is clear that human industry has contributed to global warming. My point is, there are valid reasons why many people are not just falling into lockstep with the current consensus.

Here is an interesting post on the subject at www.realclimate.org
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

You are right as far as the scientific community is concerned, but the political community is something else altogether.

Again, the point I am making is NOT about a consensus in the scientific community: it is about political consensus.

Sadly, we are not governed by a cabal of scientists, but by politicians who are constantly listening to their constituents.

That was what the scientist who posited the theory came to realize, if I remember what I read correctly. He didn't consider the overall pattern of the cooling.

Oh god no. You can't give these bastards an inch can you?

Ah. Poor critical thinking skills and a failure to understand how the scientific community works are the problems then. Not all sources of information are equally valid. You have to learn who can be trusted and who can be dismissed.

Okay.

I think 'upending civilization' is overstating the matter a bit. In fact, I'd consider massive efforts in the directions of windfarms, tidal generators, solar power generators and independently powered homes to be progress. If nothing else, the air would be a lighter shade of brown.

I also expect a lot of people to think that's not worth the effort, or at least find some frustration in hearing so many different things from so many different groups about the same issue.

What gets me is there are even more minor adjustments people could make in there daily routines in order to reduce all these environmental and resource problems, but they can't be bothered.

I'm as guilty as anybody, unfortunately, but I'm striving to improve where I can.

People like to distort the basic premise of conservation to the point that it's a matter of politics over any sort of practical concern. I fail to see how it's reasonable to think we shouldn't be so wasteful regardless of the possible ill-effects. Just because you don't think it's going to heat up the Earth and fuck up the ecosystem, how can you justify using so much gas in your car?

On the most literal and practical level possible, most (if not all) solutions to these issues have distinct benefits regardless of the political posturing surrounding them.

I can't believe James Inhofe can claim with a straight face that global warming is a vast conspiracy formulated by the Weather Network to boost their ratings. I think it's one of the dumbest statements to come out of American politics in the past ten years, and there have been some doozies. And Harper's an oil business accountant who chose a self-described laissez-faire capitalist for Environment Minister. Her right-hand man was the former president of the Canadian chapter of Focus on the Family, and a biblical Fundamentalist. Of course I can't give these people an inch. Shmucks with websites, even well-funded shmucks like the American Enterprise Institute and the like, can damn well publish like real scientists do if they want to be taken seriously.

And while I'm at it, that goes for the Creationists out there too! Grrr!

What the fuck? That's...insane...literally insane.

. . .

What he says is "It's all about money. Where would the Weather Channel's ratings be if all of a sudden people weren't scared any more?" He uses the words 'far left' in the interview as well. That's always code for 'people who disagree with Republican policy'.

I watch the Weather Channel for the weather. Aside from the occasional awful storm I'll have to drive in, it rarely scares me.

As far as I know, though, there really isn't much of a debate between the scientific community about the validity of the global warming theory. The scientists are pretty unanimous about it, to my knowledge. Whatever debate there is, it's about the fine points. There are no conflicting viewpoints, at least from organizations relevant to the subject, in regards to this matter so there's no reason for the public to be confused.

I live in a country that's starting to get hit really hard because of climate change and it's infuriating watching the supposedly most advanced country on earth stonewall every attempt at a solution.

Hearing shit like this just frustrates me so much. It's like, you want to get involved and promote things you believe in that are measurably better for EVERYONE, but this is the kind of shit you run up against. It's disheartening at best. I get really disenfranchised at times when encountering that stonewall attitude of "You can't possibly be right at all no matter how much evidence and reason you may have!"

Funny how I keep coming here.

I'm assuming you're referring to Greece here so I'm curious about what's happening over there. What's both the climate situation and the political one regarding this issue?

There is a very real debate in the scientific community about whether global warming is man made or a natural occurrence. There was never a real scientific debate on if global warming exists, everyone with a valid credential knows it exists and it's a natural cycle of the earth. The debate was between man made vs. natural.

Unfortunately, most climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers etc.. won't get a mic in front of their face unless they're preaching doom and gloom. They also wont get grants unless they're willing to sign papers or make statements that global warming exists.

The main credentialed guy who supports global warming being man made, won't release his data and algorithms that were used to generate the predicted man-made global warming. That is the main reason why there is still debate. You can get anything you want out of a computer modeling machine if you tweak the numbers, that's why climatologists and meteorologists who come out with it being a natural cycle open their data up for others to proof their work.

I find it humorous that you think the oil industry is bogging this down, who do you think the people are that are shoveling money into alternative energy resources.

Also, the reason why solar and wind plants aren't that viable (yet) is because there are inadequate means to store and transfer the energy on a large scale. There are already methods (that have been around for decades) to produce energy with zero pollution. The problem is storage and how to disperse the energy. There are firms that are making great strides at solving these problems and they'll make a mint.

Also, beakers, and hypothesises, and formulas, and such. And ramifications. In conclusion, global warming is an issue that affects us all. Thank you.

Good fucking God.

Your facts are backwards, Snaieke. Most climate change advocates have held their research up for peer review. And your charitable analysis of how oil companies are behaving is laughable. Most of the money is spent on marketing. Looks like its working on ya. The tiny fraction that actually pays off is spent in lobbying.

You're right that the energy storage problem is very real. It is the main choke point in hybrids. An out-of-date, inefficient infrastructure is also a huge issue.

But this effort to discredit scientists' motives has always annoyed the piss out of me. As if the public sector is this goldmine of cash. If you wanna get paid, you're not gonna skip this big oil gig and try to get a high-falutin' job at NOAA.

I don't listen to the media when it comes to global warming. 99% of the stuff they try to sell is designed at hits \ viewership. (same can be said of politicians)

I could probably track down a few articles and individuals with whom you could read their analysis but at this point, global warming is a religion. Try telling someone that it isn't man made is fruitless, once they've bought into the man-made opinion, they're locked in. It is a religion, as it is entirely derived on faith and not facts.

Doubt me? Show me the data, core samples, information, etc.. that was entered into the modeling computer to extrapolate the earths history to validate the supposed man-made warming. You see, we have a finite amount of resources in this world. If we spend all this money on combating global warming, we're going to have to skimp on a few things. Like, clean drinking water. Starvation, curing the AIDS epidemic, etc.. I'm all for spending money on alternative energy solutions, oil is a finite resource. I'm all for getting better gas mileage, having cleaner air, etc.. but, there are higher priorities in this world of ours than something that is 50-100 years down the road.

If sea levels are to rise 3-7 meters, we will be able to build adequate levee's for any city that will be in peril, and remember this isn't happening overnight, this will be a slow rise. If countries are going to have a water supply problem, where their water will evaporate or their streams will run dry due to warmer conditions, we can build sufficient storage devices to ensure they can last through the warmer months of the year. If countries will be unable to grow crops, other countries will be able to pick up their slack (Canada, Russia, etc..) as they'll have recently thawed fertile fresh soil ripe for growing. Not to mention, there will be fewer deaths in the world. More people die due to cold \ winter than due to heat \ summer. This isn't the end of the world, we will adapt.

No there isn't. There are a few naysayers.

I imagine you wouldn't have to go back more than five years to find outfits like the AEI and Cato and the White House claiming otherwise despite your claims.

Please prove this. Then explain why these results that are falsified make it through the peer review process. And when I say 'prove this' I mean prove it for every single case. Unless you're going to argue that legitimate results agree with those you claim have been falsified by sheer coincidence.

As mentioned above, there is no debate. Just libertarians and energy concerns trying to poison the discourse.

I like the way you pretend you're qualified to second-guess their work. I look forward to the day when your refutations are published, seeing as how you're so expert.

If you'd posted abstracts to the papers that refute current findings instead of making up stupid conspiracies of corruption and pretending to be qualified to second guess experts in a very complicated field, I might take you seriously.

And it is the Libertarians who are offering bribes in their attempt to poison the conversation because it might lead to policies Libertarians don't like.

Actually BP is spending real money for alternative energy...though they spend even more money on trumpeting how Green they are.

GE has made Greenpower a major part of their strategy going forward.

Also, it seems like every single venture capital firm is now pouring money into green companies. The most exciting startup I've read about recently is run by the former No2 at SAP. He has been talking with the government of Israel about converting all autos in Israel to electricity. They can do this with government support in such a compact area. Their unique twist: they plan on setting up a network of "filling stations" so that when a car's battery is running low, you drive to a station and they switch out the old battery for a new, fully charged one.

I was talking more about American companies. But yeah, BP is trying. They see the writing on the wall. The truth is that a lot of the ground level R&D for experimental high tech should be funded by the government. I'll throw in the internet as a good example of what I'm talking about. Speaking of which, can we just get Al Gore on this problem? He's plenty smart and reasonable.