The Sad Truth About Global Warming

[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

 

[Ark of the Covetor]

So to continue his research, my professor had to sell his soul to the Devil - or at least, that's what many would say. Who was willing to fund his research? Big Oil, who had a vested interest in disproving anthropogenic climate change. And because Big Oil was funding his research, my professor was demonized by the public and made a pariah in the scientific community - all because he wanted to question the prevailing opinions.

Yeah, I'm not buying that. Was he "demonized" and "made a pariah" because "he wanted to question the prevailing opinions", or because he was willing to accept funding from vested interests who have a proven track record of "paying for results" in order to do so? I'm betting it was the latter.

To illustrate why criticism was entirely justifiable, lets consider Jimmy. Jimmy is a hypothetical scientist who questions the prevailing opinion that smoking is a direct cause of lung cancer. Now, lets say that Jimmy is struggling to find funding for his research, given the reams of evidence which directly support the proposition that he questions - I think it would be perfectly valid to criticise Jimmy in very strong terms indeed if he decided to remedy his funding problems by going on the payroll of the fucking tobacco industry.

Is that not at least part of why peer-reviewing exists though? To ensure that no matter where the money came from, the science remains sound? Vested interests can try and pay for results all they like, but if their agendas result in a flawed method, the scientific community is going to know it, and they're going to call it out. Beyond that, it's just a question of how much attention the rest of us pay to what's being said.

The other two who raised this argument can consider this my reply to them as well:

1. Peer review is not perfect. It is possible to slip through with an atrocious study and not have it caught until years later; see Dr Andrew Wakefield, the cockmongler who legitimised the "vaccines cause autism" bullshit.

2. There are entire journals out there which exist solely to publish paid or ideologically-driven research without proper scrutiny, and in most cases the general public don't have a fucking scooby what the difference is between Nature and The Journal of Totally Accurate Oil Industry Research Into Climate Change Honest Guv. The media are either also clueless, or also partisan and so don't give a shit, and so shitty studies with terrible methodologies are transmogrified in the minds of punters into "CLIMATE CHANGE DEBUNKED: THIS SCIENCE DUDE SAYS SO! NEWS AT 11!".

3. Even if the bloke mentioned in the article above happens to be one of the four genuine and honest climate researchers employed by the oil industry, he's still in the wrong, because by taking their funding to do climate research when he knows full-well that the vast, vast majority of oil industry climate research is spurious bullshit designed to steer the debate through news media and bamboozling fucking moronic politicians, he's helping to legitimise them. He becomes someone the industry can point to whenever they're caught out pushing bogus research, or vastly overinflating the results of a study to support their commercial objectives.

I have zero sympathy for researchers who take corporate money in cases like this, because they know damn well what they're doing and why it's bullshit, they know they're putting the politics before the science; there are plenty of climatologists out there who disagree with or question parts of the anthropocentric climate change model, but they don't seem to have any issues finding funding, which means the guy in the story is either stupendously unlucky, shit at making funding proposals, or one of the fringe batshit loons who thinks the whole thing is a giant conspiracy.

 

[flarty]

snip

Those charts are all well and good but ultimately they are still only talking about a tenth or two of a degree. Also, as I said in my first post satellite data shows that there hasn't been any warming in close to two decades. Beyond that though the "hockey stick" graph has been pretty well debunked multiple times over and Michael Mann is a hack in every sense of the word who fought for years to keep key pieces of information from being released.

Really? Has it? Because I'm studying Environmental science and ecology at university and I have not seen anything that can debunk the extensive catalog of ice cores, tree rings and lake sediment. Unless you are talking about climate gate, in which case climate gate was a manipulation of evidence to stop misinterpretation of the data, as tree rings only give an indication of what the local environment was like at any given time as opposed to global.

 

[Super Cyborg]

Frankly, i wonder why nobody seems to acknowledge that the human popuation is the root cause of everything.

If there were less humans around, there simply wouldnt be a need to produce so much to support them.

Probably going to get some flak for that statement. Wouldnt be the first time and i look forward to adding some names to the ignore list.

That is a huge problem that doesn't seemed to be addressed enough. because of the billions that inhabit all the planet, thing get changed quickly. When there was few large cities and many villages, people could easily live and effect very little of the environment. With all the people in the world now, we have to take over more of the space, allowing for less places for other animals and such.

Factor in humans ability to make things that cause even greater problems, even with the good, it's a formula for disaster.

 

[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.