Obama Picks Environmentalist Kook as Top

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Let’s get one thing straight.

Global warming is pretty much a consensus. That doesn’t mean it’s the absolute truth. It isn’t religion, it just means that most smart people, knowledgeable on the subject, educated on the subject, who actually studied the matter, agree with it.

So I have 2 questions for Phil.

Phil, what did you study do have your own opinion on the matter? No, qouting internet sources doesn’t count.
And what did you swallow to call everyone that doens’t agree with you a kook?

You’re the kook here.
[/quote]

Actually I work as a research and development scientist for one of the largest science companies in America. I have access to not only printed material but verbal research reviews that are inaccessible to the majority of Americans because they are classified as trade secrets.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have called the person a kook, but this environmentalist hysteria makes me angry, because it will hit the American worker in the pocket book in the form of direct or indirect taxes. Plus if Obama pushes more ethanol mandates, it will continue to drive the prices of food up which will also hurt the American worker.

I mean right now, the objective estimates are the ethanol mandates have driven up the price of food 50 to 75%. How high will they have to be driven to realize that at least corn based ethanol is a sham?

42

Another article that breaks down how CO2 levels were actually higher than they are now before even the industrial revolution:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6855

43

[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081220/ap_on_el_pr/obama

Why global warming it a myth:

http://www.paulmacrae.com/?p=78

[/quote]

That graph on the paul macrae site (fig 1): what is its source? Its general trends are correct but all of the specifics are wrong. Uncanily so. Almost like it’s been twisted delibrately to prove a point…

44

The earth operates in cycles, always has, always will. We may speed up that cycle slightly(say, 399.99 million years instead of 400 million - that is an illustration, not intended to be taken as my interpretation of any science or non-science argument), but what is going to happen will happen.

The earth cools down, then the climate shifts, everything heats up(global warming?), and we overcompensate by going into an ice age. The glaciers melt and retreat toward the poles(cooler areas), ocean levels rise, everything warms up again, and repeat.

Yes, this is oversimplification, but it happened an untold number of times prior to the dawn of man, and it will happen again.

Sorry, I don’t claim to be any kind of scientist, nor do I pretend to sit around reading scientific texts so I can argue on the intrawebs. For an easy read with tons of info, check out Bill Bryson’s ‘Short History of Nearly Everything’.

45

Global warming caused by humans is bollocks

But yes the earth is warming, out of the little ice age we were just in, maybe it will get as warm as it was 1,000 years ago. That’d be nice.

Read in here

http://www.junkscience.com/

Never could work out why powerful interests have been pushing the global warming bullshit for so long, until of course the arrival of carbon tax.

46

News flash. None of the stimulus projects have undergone any sort of carbon dioxide environmental review and they can all be stopped by the environmental wacko’s when this get’s passed.

Brilliant!

47

There used to be a glacier up to a mile thick right where I am sitting, according to my school teachers when I was a kid.

Since man is the first and foremost obvious cause of global warming, I wonder how those glaciers disappeared? Should archaeologists be looking for ancient SUVs?

Actually, sarcasm aside, I am genuinely curious how warming now can be said to be so obviously from a different cause than the warming was then.

48

[quote]Sloth wrote:
If human CO2 contribution was cut to zero, how much warming will we have cut? [/quote]

we wouldn’t be around to find out hahahha

49

[quote]phil_leotardo wrote:
Another article that breaks down how CO2 levels were actually higher than they are now before even the industrial revolution:

Thats an excellent link. Anyone who wants to open their mind and do some rational thinking would be well served to read it. HEre is some of it :

"The notion of low pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric level, based on such poor knowledge, became a widely accepted Holy Grail of climate warming models. The modelers ignored the evidence from direct measurements of CO2 in atmospheric air indicating that in 19th century its average concentration was 335 ppmv.?

“Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.”

There are many problems with the ice core record. It takes years, sometimes up to 80, for air to be trapped in the ice so the question is what is actually being trapped and measured? Melt water moving through the ice especially when the ice is close to the surface can contaminate the air bubble. Bacteria form in the ice releasing gases even in 500,000-year-old ice at great depth. Under the pressure below 50m ice changes from brittle to plastic and begins to flow. The layers formed with each year of snowfall gradually disappear as the ice layers meld and compress. A considerable depth of ice covering a long period of time is required to obtain a single reading at depth.

But in the end the elitists will have it their way. Their Political machine will most likely prevail. Resistance is almost futile. Trying to fight them is like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Yes, global warming is real. But we are not that cause of it. End of story.

50

[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Let’s get one thing straight.

Global warming is pretty much a consensus.[/quote]

Assuming by consensus you mean an absolute basal agreement among members of an arbitrarily defined group, then yes, consensus it is.

Typical saying something without actually saying anything. ‘Most smart people’ or 45% of people with an IQ above 110? Agree with what? Sometime in the future the Earth will be warmer than it is now?

Rather than being able to clearly define it and maintain consensus and have people agree with the core values and truth of what you’re really saying, you’re illusory so that the more clearly you define “it”, the more minority the agreement becomes.

[quote]So I have 2 questions for Phil.

Phil, what did you study do have your own opinion on the matter? No, qouting internet sources doesn’t count.
And what did you swallow to call everyone that doens’t agree with you a kook?

You’re the kook here.
[/quote]

Actually, by getting his climate impact information over the internet, rather than driving to the movie theater, he’s actually being rather climate savvy. By getting his ideas from others, and posting and assembling them and distributing them digitally, he’s doubling his public service.

You should thank him for not using his private jet and then pay him so that he can make his home more eco-friendly and buy off his carbon footprint. I would consider you a global warming denier until you do.

51

[quote]Gael wrote:

Oh, and for the record, here’s a quote from the wikipedia article you suggested:

[i]In the twentieth century, a hypothetico-deductive model for scientific method was formulated (for a more formal discussion, see below):

1. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step 2.
2. Form a conjecture: When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook.
3. Deduce a prediction from that explanation: If you assume 2 is true, what consequences follow?
4. Test : Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove 2. It is a logical error to seek 3 directly as proof of 2. This error is called affirming the consequent.

This model underlies the scientific revolution. One thousand years ago, Alhazen demonstrated the importance of steps 1 and 4. Galileo (1638) also showed the importance of step 4 (also called Experiment) in Two New Sciences. One possible sequence in this model would be 1, 2, 3, 4. If the outcome of 4 holds, and 3 is not yet disproven, you may continue with 3, 4, 1, and so forth; but if the outcome of 4 shows 3 to be false, you will have go back to 2 and try to invent a new 2, deduce a new 3, look for 4, and so forth.

Note that this method can never absolutely verify (prove the truth of) 2. It can only falsify 2.[7] (This is what Einstein meant when he said “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”[8])[/i]

[/quote]

Let’s ammend the above appropriately:

  1. Don’t use your experience, global warming is too far reaching and subtle to rely on just experience. Since we can’t rely on our experience, we’ll proceed to step 2.

  2. Use the same conjecture that’s been used since Fourier invented it 200 yrs. ago.

  3. Deduce many, many predictions from that explanation.

  4. Test all predictions, even contradictory ones, keep any and all that pass. It is a logical error to assume that infinitely many tests will be infinitely accurate with infinite certainty and that guessing in parallel or rapid succession is anything other than guessing.

Simpler theories are generally considered better than complex theories, but given a finite set of data, one could easily generate infinite theories of infinite complexity. True expertise doesn’t reside with those capable of generating theory, expertise is knowing which theories are most accurate and even this is superceded by which theories are appropriately accurate or useful.