The Sad Truth About Global Warming

[ailurus]

I do think your professor was in the wrong here.

He shouldn't have accepted research money from big oil. That's a very, very clear conflict of interest.

I don't think he was demonized or made a pariah because his research went against prevailing opinions, I'm fairly certain he was demonized and made a pariah because he showed extremely bad judgment.

There's plenty research showing that industry funding introduces bias:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447808/?tool=pubmed
http://www.cochrane.org/news/blog/how-well-do-meta-analyses-disclose-conflicts-interests-underlying-research-studies

And yet, accepting money from pro-green, pro-alternative energy or pro-environmental groups or organizations is fine? Face it - its almost impossible to get funding from an unbiased source these days.

The good thing about science is that it exists regardless of whether or not you believe in it.

Don't make me laugh. A large portion of the stuff that's published as 'science' these days is just utter garbage. The sad fact is that while peer review is a wonderful idea in theory, it and much of the scientific community has become terribly biased and corrupted. A few of the more recent 'gems' out there:
You can generate papers from scratch on a computer, and still get them published easily [http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763]
The name of the author or university can play a larger role than the content of the article in deciding if its publishable [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/]
Want to get published? Have you and your friends review each other's papers under fake names [http://jvc.sagepub.com/content/20/10/1601.abstract]
Best way to get people to ignore your paper? Add math! [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406806/]

Anyone who has spent any time in a research environment can tell you that publication and grants is just as much if not more about the politics than the work. Trying to claim that anything SCIENCE! is above belief, bias and public perception is as wrong as you could possibly be.

 

[Hagi]

I do think your professor was in the wrong here.

He shouldn't have accepted research money from big oil. That's a very, very clear conflict of interest.

I don't think he was demonized or made a pariah because his research went against prevailing opinions, I'm fairly certain he was demonized and made a pariah because he showed extremely bad judgment.

There's plenty research showing that industry funding introduces bias:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447808/?tool=pubmed
http://www.cochrane.org/news/blog/how-well-do-meta-analyses-disclose-conflicts-interests-underlying-research-studies

And yet, accepting money from pro-green, pro-alternative energy or pro-environmental groups or organizations is fine? Face it - its almost impossible to get funding from an unbiased source these days.

No, that's kinda my entire point. Don't put words into my mouth.

Funding from any organisation with an invested interest is bad. And while completely 100% objectively unbiased is definitely impossible there's certainly funding available from organisations whose entire freaking mission statement isn't directly involved in the outcome of your research isn't.

Universities, the government, independent agencies etc. all may have biased individuals composing them but the purpose of the organization remains neutral. Big oil, Greenpeace etc. their very purpose is biased towards certain outcomes.

 

[Hagi]

You know, I tried for 15 minutes to search to whatever companies are funding research on global warming, and it's apperantly a state secret since almost all sites I was pointed forward were about who funds the deniers. And I can bet my money there's some companies with money to gain from advocating the global warming craze who don't want to be known.

But I guess "conflict of interests" only applies to the oppsite side.

Yes, that was obviously what I was saying. Just take the first letter from each sentence and it clearly spells out "any research that doesn't support global warming is a clear conflict of interest".

Can we please stop the "but they do it too!" whining as if that makes any difference whatsoever? That trick didn't work in kindergarten and it won't work on academic research either.

Taking research money from big oil is bad regardless of what other researchers may or may not be doing.

 

[Hagi]

But you criticized the person for taking funding that's a conflict of interest, so shouldn't the same rules apply to the other side? Isn't THAT exactly what a child in kindergarten would say "The rules don't apply to me"?

I'm sick of the idea that cause justify the means that's so prevalent today.

Could you quote the part where I said the same rules shouldn't apply to the other side?

 

[Grabehn]

I still remember when i was a kid and they always told me before the year 2000 the ice caps would be totally melted.

And we would all just have to learn to swim? Yeah, I remember that back in the day, it was one of the very few things I wasn't scared of when I was a child though.

 

[meiam]

Honestly considering climate change can:

A) Wipe us out in the next 100 years (a drop by 2 degree celsius cause ice age, small number can have huge impact)

B) Even if we were to completely stop pollution tomorrow, we'd still be completely fucked because the CO2 is still in the atmosphere and because the permafrost and the ocean claptrap are feeding the positive feedback curve.

I think finding the cause is pretty irrelevant, we need to fix this ASAP, right now we should be using all our resource toward fixing it, yet barely any is used. So yeah if we could stop funding research into finding the cause and instead put it into mass scale geo engineering that'd be awesome. What was his hypothesis anyway? Solar activity? Volcano? Dark matter? Unless his hypothesis was something we could actually do something about in the immediate or very near term, it's flat out pointless, I'd rather we live without being really sure why than die knowing why.

 

[Hagi]

But you criticized the person for taking funding that's a conflict of interest, so shouldn't the same rules apply to the other side? Isn't THAT exactly what a child in kindergarten would say "The rules don't apply to me"?

I'm sick of the idea that cause justify the means that's so prevalent today.

Could you quote the part where I said the same rules shouldn't apply to the other side?

"Taking research money from big oil is bad regardless of what other researchers may or may not be doing."

Why is that less moral than people who invested in solar and wind energy funding climate change advocates?

That's not what that sentence means.

What it means is is that whatever (AKA regardless) other researchers are doing the judgment of taking research money from big oil remains the same.

If other researchers are out clubbing baby seals then taking money from big oil is still bad, it doesn't somehow become good because others are doing something even worse.
If other researchers are also taking money from biased sources then taking money from big oil is still bad, it doesn't somehow become good because others are doing exactly the same.
If other researchers are simultaneously curing cancer and solving world hunger then taking money from big oil is still bad, it doesn't somehow become good because others are doing much better.

It's completely irrelevant what other researchers are doing.

 

[Zato-1]

so much so that even my deliberate usage of the term global warming rather than climate change has upset a number of you reading this.

I actually become upset whenever people use the term "climate change" instead of "global warming". Global Warming is the more concise, accurate term as far as I can see; it conveys the idea succinctly, without a lot of room for misinterpretation. The planet is heating up. Why is it heating up? Good, complex question, but there's no real doubt that human activity is a contributing factor. How much is it heating up? Another good question, but I won't open that can of worms in this forum post. Still, the term "Global Warming" succeeds in getting the main point across.

And then there's Climate Change. From an academic point of view it may be a valid term, but for laymen, it is disastrous in its ambiguity. Were there more tornadoes in the Atlantic last year? Climate Change! Are there fewer tornadoes in the Atlantic this year? Climate Change! Is the average surface temperature in the planet going up? Climate Change! Is the average surface temperature going down? Climate Change! Did last year have lower rainfall totals than average? Climate Change! And if this year has greater rainfall totals than average? Climate Change!

Climate Change alarmists can (and do) point to literally any variation in weather patterns as "evidence" that the world is going to end unless we give up all of our decision-making power to their environmentalist gods. It's the term "Climate Change" that upsets me.

Climate Change is used because "Global Warming" implies the entire planet is uniformly warming up, and thus areas where the climate is actually changing toward colder temperatures immediately 'invalidates' the claims of Global Warming - "If the world's heating up, why has each year set more record-low temperatures than the last?!"

Except the term Global Warming doesn't imply that the planet is warming up uniformly, only that it's warming up overall. It's like if you put a square plate of food big enough on a microwave oven that the edges get stuck and the plate doesn't spin, some parts of your food will end up really hot and others will end up still cold- and yet this doesn't disprove that microwave ovens perform Food Warming, so to speak.

 

[Scow2]

so much so that even my deliberate usage of the term global warming rather than climate change has upset a number of you reading this.

I actually become upset whenever people use the term "climate change" instead of "global warming". Global Warming is the more concise, accurate term as far as I can see; it conveys the idea succinctly, without a lot of room for misinterpretation. The planet is heating up. Why is it heating up? Good, complex question, but there's no real doubt that human activity is a contributing factor. How much is it heating up? Another good question, but I won't open that can of worms in this forum post. Still, the term "Global Warming" succeeds in getting the main point across.

And then there's Climate Change. From an academic point of view it may be a valid term, but for laymen, it is disastrous in its ambiguity. Were there more tornadoes in the Atlantic last year? Climate Change! Are there fewer tornadoes in the Atlantic this year? Climate Change! Is the average surface temperature in the planet going up? Climate Change! Is the average surface temperature going down? Climate Change! Did last year have lower rainfall totals than average? Climate Change! And if this year has greater rainfall totals than average? Climate Change!

Climate Change alarmists can (and do) point to literally any variation in weather patterns as "evidence" that the world is going to end unless we give up all of our decision-making power to their environmentalist gods. It's the term "Climate Change" that upsets me.

Climate Change is used because "Global Warming" implies the entire planet is uniformly warming up, and thus areas where the climate is actually changing toward colder temperatures immediately 'invalidates' the claims of Global Warming - "If the world's heating up, why has each year set more record-low temperatures than the last?!"

Except the term Global Warming doesn't imply that the planet is warming up uniformly, only that it's warming up overall. It's like if you put a square plate of food big enough on a microwave oven that the edges get stuck and the plate doesn't spin, some parts of your food will end up really hot and others will end up still cold- and yet this doesn't disprove that microwave ovens perform Food Warming, so to speak.

But, unless something's really wrong, nothing in the microwave will end up colder than it originally was.

 

[meiam]

so much so that even my deliberate usage of the term global warming rather than climate change has upset a number of you reading this.

I actually become upset whenever people use the term "climate change" instead of "global warming". Global Warming is the more concise, accurate term as far as I can see; it conveys the idea succinctly, without a lot of room for misinterpretation. The planet is heating up. Why is it heating up? Good, complex question, but there's no real doubt that human activity is a contributing factor. How much is it heating up? Another good question, but I won't open that can of worms in this forum post. Still, the term "Global Warming" succeeds in getting the main point across.

And then there's Climate Change. From an academic point of view it may be a valid term, but for laymen, it is disastrous in its ambiguity. Were there more tornadoes in the Atlantic last year? Climate Change! Are there fewer tornadoes in the Atlantic this year? Climate Change! Is the average surface temperature in the planet going up? Climate Change! Is the average surface temperature going down? Climate Change! Did last year have lower rainfall totals than average? Climate Change! And if this year has greater rainfall totals than average? Climate Change!

Climate Change alarmists can (and do) point to literally any variation in weather patterns as "evidence" that the world is going to end unless we give up all of our decision-making power to their environmentalist gods. It's the term "Climate Change" that upsets me.

Climate Change is used because "Global Warming" implies the entire planet is uniformly warming up, and thus areas where the climate is actually changing toward colder temperatures immediately 'invalidates' the claims of Global Warming - "If the world's heating up, why has each year set more record-low temperatures than the last?!"

Except the term Global Warming doesn't imply that the planet is warming up uniformly, only that it's warming up overall. It's like if you put a square plate of food big enough on a microwave oven that the edges get stuck and the plate doesn't spin, some parts of your food will end up really hot and others will end up still cold- and yet this doesn't disprove that microwave ovens perform Food Warming, so to speak.

But, unless something's really wrong, nothing in the microwave will end up colder than it originally was.

It can, if you take food out of the freezer and put it on a plate at room temperature, the cold food will chill the plate.

Captcha: vanilla ice cream, yes just like ice cream, thank you captcha

 

[Major_Tom]

You can't really blame people for not trusting your professor. Last time, research funded by Big Oil showed that "lead is totes good for ya, honest".

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

The good thing about science is that it exists regardless of whether or not you believe in it.

Don't make me laugh. A large portion of the stuff that's published as 'science' these days is just utter garbage. The sad fact is that while peer review is a wonderful idea in theory, it and much of the scientific community has become terribly biased and corrupted. A few of the more recent 'gems' out there:
You can generate papers from scratch on a computer, and still get them published easily [http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763]
The name of the author or university can play a larger role than the content of the article in deciding if its publishable [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/]
Want to get published? Have you and your friends review each other's papers under fake names [http://jvc.sagepub.com/content/20/10/1601.abstract]
Best way to get people to ignore your paper? Add math! [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406806/]

Anyone who has spent any time in a research environment can tell you that publication and grants is just as much if not more about the politics than the work. Trying to claim that anything SCIENCE! is above belief, bias and public perception is as wrong as you could possibly be.

I know all about the dodgy journal practices, I'm in research myself. Does that automatically invalidate everything that's been done in this field of research? Of course not.

What I find especially amusing/depressing about the science of global warming is that people who otherwise happily accept science when it tells them 'this plane won't fall out of the sky', 'this internet will work without a wired connection', 'this skin graft will heal your wound', 'this reading means there's an earthquake coming' etc; but the minute the topic shifts to AGW, everyone suddenly feels qualified to question the experience/wisdom/methods/motives of the ENTIRE scientific community if necessary. That's pretty daft when you stop to think about it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I know all about the dodgy journal practices, I'm in research myself. Does that automatically invalidate everything that's been done in this field of research? Of course not.

What I find especially amusing/depressing about the science of global warming is that people who otherwise happily accept science when it tells them 'this plane won't fall out of the sky', 'this internet will work without a wired connection', 'this skin graft will heal your wound', 'this reading means there's an earthquake coming' etc; but the minute the topic shifts to AGW, everyone suddenly feels qualified to question the experience/wisdom/methods/motives of the ENTIRE scientific community if necessary. That's pretty daft when you stop to think about it.

Well...yes and no. On the one hand, yes, obviously.

OTOH, more or less the entire scientific community has been totally wrong about things in the past. However, this seems to be much more likely when comparing the sort of people that make up the scientific community with the sort of people they look down on (it was well known by scientists that the straight white male was superior, and it was a coincidence that scientists tended to be straight white males, for example), which isn't a factor here.

 

[spartan231490]

What rational being cares what is causing global warming? If you house catches fire, you don't sit there debating how it started. You put the damn thing out. Natural global warming is no less detrimental to us than man-made. Regardless of cause, we need to stop it, or half the world will die of thirst and the other half will starve.

 

[The Bucket]

What rational being cares what is causing global warming? If you house catches fire, you don't sit there debating how it started. You put the damn thing out. Natural global warming is no less detrimental to us than man-made. Regardless of cause, we need to stop it, or half the world will die of thirst and the other half will starve.

How do you treat a disease when you only know the symptoms and not the underlying cause?

 

[spartan231490]

What rational being cares what is causing global warming? If you house catches fire, you don't sit there debating how it started. You put the damn thing out. Natural global warming is no less detrimental to us than man-made. Regardless of cause, we need to stop it, or half the world will die of thirst and the other half will starve.

How do you treat a disease when you only know the symptoms and not the underlying cause?

We understand the mechanisms of global warming more than well enough to take action. We're just unwilling, for some stupid-ass reason, to do what must be done.

 

[Pyrian]

What rational being cares what is causing global warming? If you house catches fire, you don't sit there debating how it started. You put the damn thing out. Natural global warming is no less detrimental to us than man-made. Regardless of cause, we need to stop it, or half the world will die of thirst and the other half will starve.

How do you treat a disease when you only know the symptoms and not the underlying cause?

Apparently by continuing and indeed even accelerating in taking actions known to exacerbate said symptoms? /sarcasm

I mean, seriously, why is that even a question, anyway? That's not how medicine works; treating symptoms is common. Somebody goes to a doctor with a dangerously high fever. Do you think they wait two weeks for blood test results to come back before taking action to bring down the fever? Of course not.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I know all about the dodgy journal practices, I'm in research myself. Does that automatically invalidate everything that's been done in this field of research? Of course not.

What I find especially amusing/depressing about the science of global warming is that people who otherwise happily accept science when it tells them 'this plane won't fall out of the sky', 'this internet will work without a wired connection', 'this skin graft will heal your wound', 'this reading means there's an earthquake coming' etc; but the minute the topic shifts to AGW, everyone suddenly feels qualified to question the experience/wisdom/methods/motives of the ENTIRE scientific community if necessary. That's pretty daft when you stop to think about it.

Well...yes and no. On the one hand, yes, obviously.

OTOH, more or less the entire scientific community has been totally wrong about things in the past. However, this seems to be much more likely when comparing the sort of people that make up the scientific community with the sort of people they look down on (it was well known by scientists that the straight white male was superior, and it was a coincidence that scientists tended to be straight white males, for example), which isn't a factor here.

Science always has some things that will either eventually be proven to be dead wrong, or of which our understanding will dramatically evolve.

However, the people to critique it should by and large be other appropriately qualified scientists; not a combination of armchair experts, media pundits and politicians, as is the present case.

 

[Haerthan]

When science is held hostage to public opinion and politics, we harken back to a dark time in our history - a time of witch trials and geocentric worldviews. Years ago, one of my professors - an accomplished scientist - lamented the climate (ahem) in global warming research. The government's historical attitude toward the matter can be very roughly divided into the pre-Al Gore era of, "Blablabla we can't hear you," and the post-Inconvenient Truth era of, "Okay, we believe you; now fix it!" While the latter may seem like a victory, it was a pyrrhic one - in accepting that climate change was occurring, government funding shifted away from further investigating potential causes and toward finding solutions.

this sounds alarming, you got some more sources to confirm this is the trend right now?

Of course, there's a lot more at play in the global warming discussion - politics and capitalism, namely - which leads me to what I find saddest of all: that we need the threat of impending doom as a motivator to pollute less. Whether or not you believe that humanity is the leading cause of global warming, I think we can all agree that being kinder to our environment is in our best interest. But the myopic views of governments and corporations bent on holding power and money care too much for their immediate bottom-line to do the right, forward-thinking thing - they would rather invest in themselves than in humanity.

i understand what you are saying but heres the thing, life rarely has one correct answer for all your problems, you think as corporations as if they were made entirely of guys in suit holding a cigar in their hands and laughing maniacally each time a tree dies

there are many normals folks like you and me working at corporations and the moment you tell a corporation they must reduce their operations, those are the guys that are getting the boot, its hard to think about building a better world for your grandchildren when you cant even feed your kids right now

and then theres this other problem, many countries in the world, such as mine, depend on Oil exports to survive, Oil, if i recall correctly, represents 90% of our exports, is the one thing that has kept this show running for the last 80 years

now youd be right to assume my country is full of idiots who havent put any effort into doing something besides exporting oil, i wont deny that, but the fact remains, any hit to the oil market affects us and affect every country in a similar situation, is it right to sacrifice the livelihood of millions of people to save the planet? could you tell entire countries they have no right to prosper because the planet demands it?

the global warming issue isnt really that clear cut, its not the greed of old men whats destroying the world, but the desperate attempts to survive of millions of people

You really do NOT know how these corporations work do you? You think that the little guy, working at the gas station is going to be asked about losing his job? Or the rig workers over in the Canadian oilpatch in Alberta? No, all they get is a pink slip. Oil is down to 60 or so per barrel, meaning that in order to "keep their profits" the big suits will fire 1000 people. Suncor did this to 1000 Albertans. Yea they tried surviving, now they looking for jobs. So please do not come to me with "but corporations feed people". You are nothing but labour to them.

Also let us see do we want millions to survive? or billions to die? If the patterns persists the way it does a lot of the coastal areas will be flooded. You can kiss good bye to New York, Venice, half of freaking Holland and the coastal areas of the world. Not to mention of the ecological devastation by continued drilling into the ocean (the Gulf disaster that BP had to deal with). The climate change affecting the crops' pattern. The fact that arable land is becoming scarcer with the continued change (Gobi desert is advancing south - http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2003/update26). We are killing ourselves. So you will please excuse if I see through your farcical "but the little guy has to survive". Not when the big boys try to stifle advancements in science and their greed kills the little guy anyways.

Also standard economics, diversify so that if one thing fails, it won't bring you down. Alberta is suffering cause of idiots relying on big oil.

 

[Razhem]

And if Global Warming is a natural climate cycle do we prevent it too? I mean, it is also a very possible scenario, the Earth has gone through a few hot/cold cycles since it's inception, by "putting out the fire" without knowing what we are doing, may we not be screwing around with something that would initially be what was "supposed to happen"?.

I don't see why that's a problem. If what is supposed to happen is bad then we change it, that's pretty much the main purpose of many of the advancements and innovations humankind has made throughout its history. Agriculture allows us to provide far more food than we are "supposed" to, vehicles allow us to travel further than we were ever "supposed" to, medicine allows people who were "supposed" to die to live.

Perhaps human beings never were supposed to change things, but if that's the case that ship has sailed long ago, and it's pointless worrying about it now. Any attempts we make to "put out the fire" may very well screw us all over, but then failing to attempt to put it out at all can screw us just as bad. Nature is heartless and random, if I've a choice in the matter I'd rather leave my fate to people and the solutions they come up with, imperfect though they may often be.

Oh, I agree, it's our thing, we adapt the environment to us, but the whole "global warming is going to KILL US!!!!" craze started because supposedly we have screwed with things to a point that it will be a problem (that I believe our effect is exaggerated does not mean I don't believe we don't have an influence in that front), so those people I would have expected to be a lot more weary of doing the headless chicken dance when trying to affect something that "is supposed to happen naturally".

For me personally, if we have to live in domes to survive the cycle of fire/ice/guinea pirates, so be it.