3,000 Low Temp Records Set This July!

[XIX]

[quote name='morostheos' post='1932725' date='Jul 26 2009, 08:52 PM']Firstly, why do you think the term "Global Climate Change" implies causality of any sort? It simply describes a lack of stasis in the global climate. The earth has gone through many periods of non-human caused global climate change throughout its history (for example - ice ages).

Secondly, do you have any qualifications to state belief in anthropomorphic global climate change is ridiculous? There are thousands of scientists that have spent many thousands of hours studying this problem who disagree with you. You are certainly free to have your own opinion, but I think it is unfair to say other opinions are ridiculous simply because they are not your own.

Lastly, humans are part of many completely natural phenomena. Just because something is completely natural doesn't exclude humans involvement, we are part of nature after all. I don't see many people arguing that humans are not the cause of the completely natural phenomena known as childbirth.





I think it is very interesting how most faithful Catholics I know do not "believe in" human-caused global climate change. There is nothing within the Catholic faith that precludes this that I am aware of, but people seem to associate it with liberal politics more than science. Many faithful Catholics tend to adopt negative views towards anything the liberal politicians tend to support, but I think on this particular issue they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. Sure, radical environmentalists use human-caused global climate change as an excuse to push for more population control and eugenics; liberal politicians use it to push for more government control and less personal freedom.

Just because our opponents use something to further their own means does not mean it is not true. Sure, I believe both radical environmentalists and liberal politicians are using the whole climate change issue in ways that distort the truth. However, as a scientist, I have read the peer-reviewed publications as well as the popular ones. I have studied and discussed the issue in detail in ecology classes and chemistry classes. There is a lot of evidence pointing towards anthropogenic climate change, too much for me to ignore.

Rather than deny the issue entirely, I think what is more important for us as Catholics is to form a genuinely catholic (small c) response to climate change - one that addresses the issue without ignoring certain unpopular populations (the unborn, for example) as well as respecting the rights of the individual, common good and subsidiarity. If we don't speak up for these points in the debate on what to do about climate change, who will? Whether we agree that humans are causing climate change or not, governments are acting on the issue.[/quote]
epic. win.

[kamiller42]

Excellent reply below. My comments embedded.

[quote name='Terra Firma' post='1933203' date='Jul 27 2009, 03:17 PM']Scientists are human beings who have families, mortgages, and car payments. When it comes to research, almost every scientist is dependent on getting funding from some source. So, the project you're working on has to fit someone's priority list somewhere. Right now, a significant source of climate research funding is coming from ... (wait for it) ... the U.S. government. And what are we funding? We are funding the search for connections between human carbon emissions and the climate.[/quote]
You hit the nail on the head. Money, money, money. That is what drives the direction of a lot of research, not the search for the truth. I know this first hand from a brother who is a scientist in the research field. If you don't have a compelling case, you don't get money. Believe in global warming; it pays!

How would you look as a scientist if you came out and said, "Global temperature changes naturally occur. Man contributes a micro-fraction to these natural forces. There is no need to worry"? Remember, man bites dog sells.
[quote]And without insulting your sources of information, your ability to teach your children, or your political leanings.[/quote]
The unrelenting barrage of "Don't believe in global warming, and you're a knuckle dragger" was not overlooked. The postings did contain an air of arrogance.

[quote]I'm not anti-science, by any stretch of the imagination. I think scientific pursuit is one of the many avenues we have to discovering truth about the world we live in, and as a means of exploring one of the many ways God has revealed himself to us. However, such pursuit needs to be balanced and fair, and science needs to recognize its limitations.[/quote]
I am anti-junk science. Can we believe such a thing exists anymore? I mean, some big foot hunters have spent nearly entire lifetimes looking for and documenting the existence of big foot, so he must exist.

[quote]When it comes to global warming, science is, in my opinion, in danger of becoming an unconscious theology. We are basing worldwide social policies on scientific research that is far less than conclusive, and that has a growing number of detractors even within the scientific community. That scares me. Continuing on this path will have, in my opinion, devastating impact on the economies of developing countries, and will long term prove debilitating to our own economy.[/quote]
"[url="http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html"]Environmentalism as Religion[/url]" is a classic by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and other sci-fi novels. He draws parallels between the modern environmental movement and Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Personally, thinking we can control the temperature of the planet is right in line with what I call "the vanity of humanity." [b]There are natural forces at work much larger than us.[/b] Of course, none of this means we shouldn't keep the environment clean. God loaned us a room in house. We have to keep our room clean. We should be sensible about it. Refute and throw out politically fueled junk science.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Terra Firma' post='1933203' date='Jul 27 2009, 02:17 PM']Really?

Let's go through the logic.[/quote]

There is no need to go through a logical case. All you really need to do is provide actual hard evidence that

"Right now, global warming as a movement is far more political and economic than it is scientific."

[quote]Scientists are human beings who have families, mortgages, and car payments. When it comes to research, almost every scientist is dependent on getting funding from some source. So, the project you're working on has to fit someone's priority list somewhere. Right now, a significant source of climate research funding is coming from ... (wait for it) ... the U.S. government.[/quote]

Climate Research where?

Let's say your case is accurate. It is still at a loss to explain who the scientific consensus extends beyond American researchers and projects funded by the American government. Are all these scientists across so many nations receiving funding structured towards identifying man as an important factor in climate change?



[quote]And what are we funding? We are funding the search for connections between human carbon emissions and the climate.[/quote]

I suppose so. I would also assume that scientists examining the health of smoking were looking for any possible adverse impacts smoking could have on the human body.

[quote]I'm not saying there is a big conspiracy out there, or that the scientists doing work now are being necessarily dishonest in their findings. (Although, a case could certainly be made for sloppiness in previously-released research.) But I am saying that the political priority we've placed on funding one small aspect of scientific inquiry in this area is shortchanging the overall process. There is no reward in researching opposing viewpoints -- funding is entirely one-sided. And that funding comes primarily from the government, so it is steeped in politics.

As Upton Sinclair stated (and Al Gore quoted in his "Inconvenient Truth" referencing big business opposition to global warming research): "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." To be reliable, science needs to be free to explore all sides of an issue. The way we're funding things now does not provide that sort of incentive. Therefore, we are politicizing scientific pursuits. This is not pure, altruistic science happening here (as if that ever happens). We are creating a monopolistic area of research in which dissent is not tolerated. How exactly does that contribute to a search for truth?[/quote]

Funding is an important part of scientific research. So is building an academic reputation through studies published in peer reviewed journals. I don't know exactly what you are asserting here. Are you saying that the structure of funding is such that not only are scientists drawing unfounded conclusions to what is in fact inclusive data but that their peers are unable to notice flaws in their methodology and experimental processes? You say you don't endorse some conspiratorial view of the matter but I am curious how far exactly you think this process of implicitly ill directed research goes.

I'm not sure what the United States, Chinese, and Western European government have in terms of motivation for prompting such seriously flawed research. Is the EPA also implicit in this process of fraudulent science by omission? The United Nations as well?

[url="http://www.ipcc.ch/"]http://www.ipcc.ch/[/url]


I don't know how many different peer reviewed findings you can doubt based on funding structures. You are talking about a consensus which extends beyond simply scientists working for a university which depends on government grants to scientists working in different countries, government agencies who receive regular funding and international bodies.

Do you believe that this method of funding has been deliberately constructed to produce flawed findings? If not then why has such an apparently obviously flawed method of funding been utilized so widely? Is it substantially different from the innumerable other projects also funded through government grants?

I have read Kuhn and certainly do not view science as a fully objective enterprise unaffected by the social context within which scientists operate. However you are making a specific claim about a particular subset of findings and attributing a particular cause as the source of the deficiencies of the findings of this section of science. Yet you haven’t provided any actual evidence to support your claim, whose scope is truly vast, other than a very vague thought experiment. I would not consider that adequate grounds for rejecting the mainstream and international scientific consensus regarding such an important question.

[quote]And just think ... I got through all that without referring to your opinion as



or an

And without insulting your sources of information, your ability to teach your children, or your political leanings.

Hmm.

[/quote]

Not all of your quoted brashness was directed at your claims. Some of it was. A claim that global warming is a myth is just asinine. I don't know any other adjective that can be used to describe it. If, as you later seemed to say, you didn't actually mean that global warming was a myth but rather that public understanding of the conclusively of the research was flawed then that is another claim all together. To that extent I would only point out that it was the claim, and not you as an individual, that I called asinine. If you do not actually hold the opinion you initially seemed to express then it does not apply to you in any way. Other then that I accept your point and will try to be more polite here.




[quote]I'm not anti-science, by any stretch of the imagination. I think scientific pursuit is one of the many avenues we have to discovering truth about the world we live in, and as a means of exploring one of the many ways God has revealed himself to us. However, such pursuit needs to be balanced and fair, and science needs to recognize its limitations.

One of my favorite writings on the topic of the relationship between science and religion is[url="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19880601_padre-coyne_en.html"] a letter JPII wrote to George Coyne[/url], director of the Vatican Observatory. In it, he notes that:


When it comes to global warming, science is, in my opinion, in danger of becoming an unconscious theology. We are basing worldwide social policies on scientific research that is far less than conclusive, and that has a growing number of detractors even within the scientific community. That scares me. Continuing on this path will have, in my opinion, devastating impact on the economies of developing countries, and will long term prove debilitating to our own economy.

Even the most loud-mouthed Chicken Littles project that it will take decades for any changes we make in terms of reducing emissions to evidence themselves in the global climate. Taking time to more fully research what's going on, from a variety of viewpoints, is only going to help us to craft better policies. I'd far rather we engage in more comprehensive inquiry than charge ahead without really knowing what we're dealing with.[/quote]

Actually I believe the general consensus is that the effects of global warming are coming about faster and to greater magnitude than previously suspected and that there is a relatively small window of opportunity to curb its impact. Especially considering how long it will take countries to actually implement the environmental reforms necessary to cut carbon emissions.

Now I did ask you a question which you avoided. What is the logic of your position? You seem to be betting on a rather colossal error in judgment across almost the whole of the scientific establishment. Considering the consensus you need to hope is wrong concerns massive and potentially catastrophic impacts on the one and only habitat we have I really don't understand your mindset. Unless you believe the pollutants and carbon outputs supposedly exacerbating the climate change are actually good for the environment. Naturally it is important to be delicate with the fragile economic growth of developing countries, which seems to be more grounds for demanding that wealthy countries bear the burden of dealing with climate change as long as possible while developing countries work to adjust their methods of development to become less environmentally destructive than anything else.

I think this further undermines your case in two ways.
[url="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/reports/skeptics.html"]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ho...s/skeptics.html[/url]

1-The obvious direct financial motives of many of the skeptics.

2- “[b]Dr. Lindzen has claimed in Newsweek and elsewhere that his funding comes exclusively from government sources[/b], but he does not seem to include speaking fees and other personal compensation in this statement. Ross Gelbspan, who did some of the first reporting on climate skeptics' links to industry, wrote in Harper's Magazine in 1995: "[Lindzen] charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC."”

It seems that at least one of the “skeptics” receives some government funding. Yet that funding does not seem to be contingent on his toeing the alleged party line

[reelguy227]

[quote name='kamiller42' post='1933273' date='Jul 27 2009, 05:29 PM']The postings did contain an air of arrogance.[/quote]


That's what I was getting at.


[quote name='Hassan' post='1933274' date='Jul 27 2009, 05:29 PM']Other then that I accept your point and will try to be more polite here.[/quote]


Please do, your arrogance is getting old.

Edited July 27, 2009 by reelguy227

[Hassan]

Furthermore I'm confused. In most instances I am aware of the funding goes to projects, not for the personal finances of the scientists recieving it. They are actually paid by the university, whose criteria is very dependent on publications.

Moreover your causality seems off.

[morostheos]

How many of those who believe it imprudent to do anything about climate change have heard of the precautionary principle? If you have, what is your response to it?

[quote]The precautionary principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.[/quote] ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle"]From wikipedia[/url])

The "action" in this case would be to continue polluting as we have been.

[kamiller42]

[quote name='morostheos' post='1933298' date='Jul 27 2009, 06:17 PM']How many of those who believe it imprudent to do anything about climate change have heard of the precautionary principle? If you have, what is your response to it?

([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle"]From wikipedia[/url])

The "action" in this case would be to continue polluting as we have been.[/quote]
I would say I agree with the criticisms in the cited article. There is no threshold of plausibility established to trigger taking preventive measures. Some scientists believe we have already passed the threshold. The global climate naturalists would say we are not even close to reaching any perceived threshold. There is no mathematical way we could reach any significant threshold through normal, natural behaviors.

I also agree with its criticism of an absence of a degree of risk; all actions considered equally risky. Is my breathing out equally damaging to the environment as say a volcano erupting? No.

Last but not least, I would say the same principle could be applied to itself. What happens if the preventive actions are the actions which do harm to people or the environment? I would like to apply the precautionary principle to itself if it is improperly applied, which is the case in the global climate change movement.

[Hassan]

[quote name='kamiller42' post='1933273' date='Jul 27 2009, 05:29 PM']Excellent reply below. My comments embedded.


You hit the nail on the head. Money, money, money. That is what drives the direction of a lot of research, not the search for the truth. I know this first hand from a brother who is a scientist in the research field. If you don't have a compelling case, you don't get money. Believe in global warming; it pays![/quote]

So money should be given to uncompelling cases?



[quote]How would you look as a scientist if you came out and said, "Global temperature changes naturally occur. Man contributes a micro-fraction to these natural forces. There is no need to worry"? Remember, man bites dog sells.[/quote]

That would probably depend on what evidence you present.

At the moment there are global warming skeptics who are being generously paid by the energy companies to promote their views.



[quote]The unrelenting barrage of "Don't believe in global warming, and you're a knuckle dragger" was not overlooked. The postings did contain an air of arrogance.[/quote]

Yes. Because denying global warming is occurring goes against a truly massive amount of evidence collected by scientists all over the world.

[quote]I am anti-junk science.. Can we believe such a thing exists anymore? I mean, some big foot hunters have spent nearly entire lifetimes looking for and documenting the existence of big foot, so he must exist. [/quote]

It is shocking. Some people even reject Darwinism and the idea that the climate is warming.


[quote]"[url="http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html"]Environmentalism as Religion[/url]" is a classic by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and other sci-fi novels. He draws parallels between the modern environmental movement and Judeo-Christian beliefs.[/quote]

I think Dr. Crichton should stick to novels and medicine.

[quote]Personally, thinking we can control the temperature of the planet is right in line with what I call "the vanity of humanity." [b]There are natural forces at work much larger than us.[/b] Of course, none of this means we shouldn't keep the environment clean. God loaned us a room in house. We have to keep our room clean. We should be sensible about it. Refute and throw out politically fueled junk science.[/quote]

So the idea that a major nuclear exchange could drastically alter the temperature of the planet is vanity?

[morostheos]

As something to add to the discussion, here is what the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says regarding the precautionary principle and environmental issues:

[quote]469. [i]The authorities called to make decisions concerning health and environmental risks sometimes find themselves facing a situation in which available scientific data are contradictory or quantitatively scarce. It may then be appropriate to base evaluations on the "precautionary principle", which does not mean applying rules but certain guidelines aimed at managing the situation of uncertainty.[/i] This shows the need for making temporary decisions that may be modified on the basis of new facts that eventually become known. Such decisions must be proportional with respect to provisions already taken for other risks. Prudent policies, based on the precautionary principle require that decisions be based on a comparison of the risks and benefits foreseen for the various possible alternatives, including the decision not to intervene. This precautionary approach is connected with the need to encourage every effort for acquiring more thorough knowledge, in the full awareness that science is not able to come to quick conclusions about the absence of risk. The circumstances of uncertainty and provisional solutions make it particularly important that the decision-making process be transparent.[/quote]

I think that the situation described here is the one we are currently in. Do we know that humans have caused the climate change we are seeing? No. Do we know we can do anything to change it? No. Should we do the best we can with the information we have? I think so.

[Hassan]

[quote name='reelguy227' post='1933275' date='Jul 27 2009, 04:31 PM']Please do, your arrogance is getting old.[/quote]

edit.

Edited July 27, 2009 by Hassan

[Hassan]

[quote name='morostheos' post='1933336' date='Jul 27 2009, 06:05 PM']As something to add to the discussion, here is what the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says regarding the precautionary principle and environmental issues:



I think that the situation described here is the one we are currently in. Do we know that humans have caused the climate change we are seeing? No. Do we know we can do anything to change it? No. Should we do the best we can with the information we have? I think so.[/quote]


I have never understood the logic of doing nothing.

[Luthien]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1933338' date='Jul 27 2009, 09:08 PM']I have never understood the logic of doing nothing.[/quote]


[quote]Should we do the best we can with the information we have? I think so.[/quote]

[Hassan]

[quote name='Luthien' post='1933339' date='Jul 27 2009, 06:12 PM'][/quote]


I don't understand

[Luthien]

I was just highlighting a point in morostheos' post.

Edited July 27, 2009 by Luthien

[Hassan]

[quote name='Luthien' post='1933342' date='Jul 27 2009, 06:19 PM']I was just highlighting a point in morostheos' post.[/quote]

Yes. I think it's a good point.