[Off Topic] 60 Minutes on Global Warming

Big Science on the public trough is most of the problem
with the search for truth in our day. Careers depend
on political correctness.

Couldn’t “Global Warming” simply be the waning of the previous Ice Age?
If we were entering the next Ice Age, wouldn’t we be concerned about “Global Cooling?”

Does anyone honestly believe that mankind could stop the next ice age from coming?

Didn’t anybody see “Chicken Little”?!

Really

Global warming may be real, but who thinks mankind can stop it even if we wanted to? Not me. I mean, volcanos spit out far more “greehouse gasses” every year than humans do. Perhaps the Kyoto treaty should fine countries with active volcanos.

Here is a link which we might want to consider before getting out the torches and pitchforks:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

Has any one noticed how modernity (new age materialism) seems to mirror Judeo-Christianty, substituting it’s own theories for beliefs which Judeo-Christians have always maintained?

Creation of Universe - Big Bang Theory
Creation of Life - Origin of Species
End of Days - Global Warming
etc

It seems that modernity has nothing orginal to claim - it is simply an atheist religion that would have us worship ourselves.

The final book of the new testament predicts the rise of modernity in great detail (from a first century perspective) and most significantly, its consequences.

Please see moderation policy on sidebar re:

Theism and Atheism - We don’t discourage discussion of the implications ID or evolutionary theories have on religious or irreligious beliefs. We do discourage preaching–proselytizing for a particular faith or attacking one. This includes atheistic faith.

George Bush then told them to go suck an egg as the protocol became unfair and different from what the United States had agreed to in principle.

This was written up years ago in Scientific American I believe while Clinton was still president.
I’m confused.

It would help to know what you’re confused about. -ds

mmadigan,
The point that this piece made was exactly the opposite of the conclusion you reached. The climatologists are being censored by the administration. How is there a politically correct bias in this administration?

Do either Greenland or Antartica have any real-estate agents?

What I want to know is who’s editing the reports. Rove? Cheney? Or someone more sinister? (Though I can’t imagine who could be more sinister than that.) Or perhaps it’s an actual scientist who disagrees with this guy. cBS is making it sound like Rove and Cheney are taking a red pen and doing the edits themselves which would be ridiculous.

When they start accurately measuring output from the Sun and controlling for it, please let me know.

I disagree with Kyoto for reasons Dave stated, plus credit transfers. Companies and nations can keep polluting under the plan. They just trade credits. Its not creative, it is geared toward non-solutions and “corruption” - a synonym for UN boondoggles.

Its a socialist/dictator solution by world governments that do not understand how to create or spur innovation. Very few do, they only shift the blame and burden. The incentives I’d keep, the Credit Distribution is a sham, toss it and start over. Kyoto is a farce.

Two things need to be done. I’ve proposed one of them over and over the past three years to Presidential staff office:

1) Declare a National goal/race to affordable, efficient, clean energy, much like NASA’s efforts and JFK going to the moon. Initially I proposed USA, but it can easily be expaned to the World.

It can be accomplished by:

a) Reward top participants in creating new technology
b) Combination Public/Ed/Private Science teams
c) Media expands coverage, encouraging participation
d) Patent incentives, awards, etc., for winners
e) Recognition/awards even for private individuals
f) Government tax break across national, state and local boundaries for use of new technology.

In America, government is of the people and thereby given authority to spur incentive for their good. Regulations and mandates have their place certainly. But it is innovation that leads the way. Give people a reason to want to implement the new technology created in the race and they will do it happily.

Right now, cost are prohibitive to average consumers. The manufacturing process is still in its infancy and woefully behind that of car, computer and chip manufacturing. Tax incentives are sporadic across the nation and need to be normalized. The government has done this on a small scale. But it takes a leader to make it nationwide. Bush needs to step up.

This follows in the steps of all great initiatives that the USA sets its mind to. When competition is allowed, incentives given, forces put in motion, we can do anything we put our minds to.

We are very inefficient energy-wise in civil engineering, home and industrial technology. We need to MIMIC nature.

Yes, we need to address global warming, but from innovative, creative ventures of team work, not world goverment mandated/regulated solutions of the UN. Sorry, after Saddam’s oil billions and the corruption of nation states, I do not trust other nations in CREDIT SCHEMES thru the UN.

The persistent, driving force, of a goal-oriented, domineering force of Edison gave us light. The man tried everything from gum trees to cardboard box before arriving at his final light bulb. In the meantime he gave us recordings of the human voice and the birth of 1000 patents. He did this because of incentives(wall street) and man’s purposeful curiosity to discover, create and conquer the elements around him.

A man that is told to regulate himself, is like a clock being wound from a hand left going in circles.

I could really go off-topic here….

Jon, did you see the piece?
To quote:
Asked what happens, Piltz says: “It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.”

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, “Phil Cooney.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories.....age2.shtml

Geoff, Nasa has been doing it for years!
http://acrim.jpl.nasa.gov/

The segment was clear that one person who was (heavily) editing the reports was Phil Cooney, former chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, in spite of the fact that he had no scientific experience.

It was not reported (nor have I seen it reported elsewhere) if any scientists within the administration disagreed with the unedited reports at issue, or were involved in the editing process along with Cooney. However, it is significant that the edits did not include any reference to other scientific data or studies that would support the changes. The changes appear to be made without supporting evidence, and, interestingly, in a way that minimizes the effects of global warming.

I think almost all scientists who are employed by the government are serious about their work and about presenting as accurate a picture as they can, without regard for which party is in office. Hansen pointed out that the Clinton administration wanted to hear that global warming worse than it was, but he refused to bow to that pressure either. But this administration seems to be more controlling of what and how science is communicated than others.

Even if one thinks that global warming is a ‘chicken little’ scenario, the answer to that is more and better science, not the stifling of scientific discussion, especially that which is publicly funded.

what was it that was supposed to happen when all that freshwater melt goes into the ocean? possibly, desalinization (spelling?) of the sea water causing major climate moderating currents to shut down thus causing global cooling? Am I just getting this stuff from a movie or did I actually read about this somewhere as a legitimate science article??? maybe this shouldn’t be posted until I can research this and find out where I got this idea…

JJ:
Or someone more sinister? (Though I can’t imagine who could be more sinister than that.)

James Carville. That dude must be an incarnation of Lucifer…

In response to comment #7,
you mentioned that, in an article written while Clinton was President,Bush objected to “moving the goalposts”. How is that possible? The set-asides were discussed under GW Bush.

No, I didn’t say that. You inferred it. I suggest you read the SciAm article I linked, reread what I originally said, then try commenting again with the chip removed from your shoulder. -ds

It seems like the controversy over global warming is one of those issues where the outward debate conceals the real inner conflict, in much the same way that the debate between Darwinism and ID is, on one level, strictly about the science, but on another and more profound level, is also about the spiritual beliefs of opposing sides…With regard to global warming, you have on the one hand the endless discussions about whether or not the science shows that human activities are the cause of the climate changes, but at the less-articulated and more visceral level, the argument is really about what the human responsibility toward the environment should be. In my experience, many people believe that human pollution is responsible for global warming simply because they have an inherent (and I believe noble) bias to be in favor of anything which encourages humans to develop a less exploitive relationship with nature, while I have personally known many people who scoffingly reject the idea of global warming simply because they have an inherent ( and I believe ignoble) bias to oppose anything which limits their personal freedom and lifestyle, or implies that the natural world is anything but a playground/garbage dump for humans to enjoy. This underlying conflict is, again, a basic worldview conflict which is quite separate from the actual science around global warming, but which inevitably distorts our interpretations in one direction or the other. The pro-Kyoto people point to their Humvee driving neighbors in horror, recognizing in this a grotesque caricature of the hated “use the military to get more oil to pollute more and exploit others”, while many anti-Kyoto people see their …oops, I guess I just revealed my own bias, because I a unable to conjure the demon which is despised by the anti-Kyoto people…someone please conjure it for me…

carbon14

It is suppossed that if enough arctic ice melts teh Gulf Stream could be shut down. That would keep tropical waters from swirling up the cost of North America and then over to northern Europe. The cooling effect in these areas would be economically damaging but would probably not result in any serious troubles i.e. famines since the affected areas are wealthy parts of the globe. The rest of the Earth would continue to warm. The more ice we lose the more energy from the sun Earth soaks up and less of it is reflected back into space. Should the temperature rise to the point where large areas of tundra thaw then mass amounts of methane would be released from the formerly frozen peat and global warming would accelerate.

Well at least that is one plausible scenario. Dave Scott is right. The earth is far too complex for us to predict with any accuracy what will happen centuries or even decades from now. We can sya, however, that the world is warming and that this will start having deleterious consequences for the human race. We are almost certainly affecting the pace of this change. We have good reason to suspect that we may be able to slow this process and do so in a way that would at the same improve public health around the globe. Another positive spinoff for the USA would be a decreased reliance on foreign oil. So I would say that in the interests of our own national security and the health of our people, we should attempt to maintain the ecological status quo even though that is impossible in the long run.The companies that would be most affected in the US are companies in stable industries that will be able to pass the prices onto consumers. In the end I think the investments necessary now will pay solid dividends for the US if they allow us to be a pioneer in moving away from a petroleum based economy.

What is clearly not understood in this thread, what is not understood in general, is that warm or cold isn’t the issue, the issue is the rate of change. Wildly changing weather is hard to manage, even for us humans with our technology. We build houses that keep us warm, with R60 insulation, and HRV units, only to realize that we need air conditioners. We go out to build a club med only to find that it is club med “ice”. The animals and plants have it a lot worse than us. Their adaptation rates are far lower than ours. If ice ages come and go nice and slow, there is no problem. When ice ages evaporate in a decade, or arrive in a decade, well, it’s not nearly as much fun.

As one who lives in the sub-arctice (Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada) I can affirm that global warming is much more obvious up here than it is down south. Hey, Dawson City is sinking, the permafrost is melting.

However, I don’t think that anything meaningful will be done about global warming until it becomes important, very important, to the masses, the individuals, us. When it does become important to us, we will be able to pay the cost.

When it does become important to us, however, how big of a challenge are we going to have? That is the question.

“Wrong thinking by well intentioned people stopping forest fires created unnatural disasters and ecologic destruction. Combustable fuels accumulated to unnaturally high and dangerous levels in the forests. The resulting (inevitable) fires burned with far greater than natural intensity and killed life that otherwise would’ve survived a lesser fire. The ecology was geared to cycling through fires where certain species flourished in newly burned land until old growth returned for its turn at bat. Stopping natural forest fires was a bad thing that worked against ecological diversity. Is stopping global warming the same thing? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

You pinned it down with that point Dave. The problem is one of complexity. Clearcutting led to too much fuel on the forest floor, fire supression added even more. Industrial byproducts are increasing greenhouse gasses (of that there appears to be no debate??) but we are going to do something akin to fire suppression? I agree. We definitely need more and better science and we probably need it quickly.

DaveScot -

I think the demand for ‘reliable’ predictions before making decisions can itself be dangerous. In this case, we can’t test some predictions until after the fact; there are no experiments that would test some of the global predictions being made, except the experiment we are already part of. Unfortunately that one can’t be repeated. However, with respect to global warming, there are enough data, models, and partial experiments available to indicate that

1) Warming is occurring. Part of the cause of the warming is indeed natural — attempting to change that would be futile, so no serious scientific report is suggesting that we try to modify the earth’s orbit or tilt on its axis. However, the data also shows that

2) Life activity is contributing to the speed of the warming. When looking at geological records going back a long, long time, one difference between the previous warming periods and now is the overall level of CO2 — today those levels are higher than in the past. Yes, volcanos spit out lots of CO2 and other gases, as do other natural phenomena, so global warming would probably be occurring about this time anyway. But our presence does appear to be hastening that process.

These are not controversial positions — they are accepted by a vast majority of atmospheric/earth scientists. So what should we do? Scientists have provided some answers, including

1) Cutting back on our emission of CO2 in the atmosphere. This may not stop warming, but it may slow the warming down and also reduce the effects that ftrp11 pointed out. As ftrp11 also said, finding ways to move away from one of the leading contributers to human-caused CO2 levels would have other positive benefits. The costs of pursuing at least some of the options available would be worth it.

2) Paying attention to the specific changes that scientists predict will occur, such as a rise in sea level. It is predicted that sea level may rise by as much as a meter in a relatively short amount of time. But millions of people are moving to the beach each year; they should be aware of the potential risk. And in many countries, particularly Indonesia, there are people already living within that one meter mark. Some attention to what might be done to either mitigate the effects of a rise in sea level or to relocate those people would be nice. Here the costs of forcing people to relocate now would be very high, and maybe not worth it. But the costs of at least planning would again be worth it.

Yes, it is true that we cannot say precisely what the sea level will be at this time next year, or what the temperature will be at the poles, or how much of the Greenland ice sheet will remain, but data indicates that sea levels will be higher, temperatures will be warmer, and the ice sheet will be smaller. To the extent that we can take action to possibly slow those changes down, I think we should at least consider them and decide, based on the science, if we want to pursue them. In addition, we should be making plans for those changes because if they come more quickly than expected, they won’t wait around for us to catch up.

But the real point of the 60 Minutes piece was that while this administration has supported studies of warming, it has not done so well in getting the results of those studies out to the public, or in looking for ways to plan for future changes. The appearance from the outside is reflected in a The Daily Show piece last night — that the plan is to wait for someone to come up with a plan. The approach of the administration is the opposite of ‘chicken little’ — it is ‘ostrich stuffing’ (putting your head in the sand — if the danger can’t be seen, it must not exist).

As I said before, even if some in the administration do not think that global warming is as bad as some scientists are saying, or that it even exists as almost all scientists agree, they should not suppress/modify the scientific reports coming from publicly funded science studies. That’s the kind of thing that all should agree is wrong, no matter where they come down on the global warming issue.

Why should we cut down greenhouse emissions when we don’t know if that will cause harm or good? We don’t know what the effect will be! Maybe we’ll be hastening an ice age. Maybe we’ll be preventing the thawing of vast tracts of badly needed arable land. Maybe we’ll be stopping the unlocking of vast amounts of badly needed fresh water. I’d rather take a wait & see approach versus taking hideously expensive shots in the dark at what might very well turn out to be our own foot we’re shooting. -ds

DaveScot: I agree with you wholeheartedly that the extremes of utopian idealism are useless. We have to work constructively with the current situation, and do the best with what we know. In my view there is a delicate line for the idealist to walk, in which he/she is constantly mindful of the ideal, nourishing the image of what should be, while being firmly grounded in what actually is, with the admonition to ‘do no harm’ as a guiding principle. I have read somewhere (can’t remember source) that in the next century the population explosion will slow and actually we will experience declining population. Is this crazy? I don’t know.

Incidentally I just read an interview with Edward O. Wilson in Salon. It might be an interesting post.

On the other hand, DaveScot, where are we without ideals and idealists? I think it is needlessly aggressive to dismiss the whole concept of idealism simply because some people fail to achieve a proper balance between ideals and reality. The whole ID argument with Darwinism is arguably an act of idealism: the ideal being honesty and objectivity in science, for one thing. I think we shouldn’t be afraid to admit when our material reality is grossly out of tune with our perception of what should be. This is the essence of being human, really. Do you really feel there is no place for idealism, or is it that you disagree with the particular ideals of those you call “environmentalist whackos”?

tinabrewer, you are so articulate! Some of those who are anti-Kyoto are not anti-environment. They simply find the Kyoto approach too flawed. That shouldn’t let any of us off the hook regarding stewardship of the planet. Whether or not global warming is a fact, and regardless of whether we have any control over it, we should be looking for sustainable fuels and building sustainable economies. You are absolutely right about our material reality being grossly out of tune with our perception of what it should be. But how do we reach a tipping point in terms of creating balanced freedoms and healthy capitalism in the developed world that don’t abuse and exploit the developing world? What do we need to be willing to sacrifice in terms of lifestyle and profits? How much of a difference can individuals make? What influence can we exert on governments? Do we have to be “environmental wacko’s” to be heard? I hope and pray that people with moderate and persistent ideals can achieve critical mass to turn the tide. I happen to believe that the doomsayers and wacko’s are wrong, but only in degree. The truth is sometimes “both and” instead of “either or.”

Unfortunately, too much environmentalist policy is firmly entrenched in socialism, which (ironically) historically has been at the root of the greatest environmental disasters. If you want to see examples of healthy environmental policy that avoids socialism, take a look at the Claremont Institute:

http://www.claremont.org/writi.....yward.html
http://www.claremont.org/writi.....brief.html

Kathy, I fully agree with your idea that the answer is often ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. “Both/and” is often the combination which leads to the most pragmatic approach. I meant to say in my original post, what you have said better in yours, namely that regardless of the effects of human activity on global warming, we must openly confess that the ways in which we use resources are polluting. period. That means that we should strive in earnest to diminish as much as possible this negative impact, even if it cannot be positively tied to a measurable and impending global catastrophe. From a spiritual perspective, it doesn’t matter if we can measure it. We are taught that we will reap what we have sown. It is a spiritual law, and like all laws is inexorable. If we input into the system greed, malice, avarice, etc. then it is strictly impossible to hope to enjoy peace, plenty, prosperity, and love. In my view, it is not corny or mindlessly idealistic to concern ourselves IN THE FIRST PLACE with the quality of our inner lives, understanding that this will lawfully and inevitably lead to the reformation of our outer circumstances. I believe that the spirit forms matter, not vice versa, and that is why I am less inclined to seek political solutions for the gravest human conditions. We are now in the midst of a great deal of reaping, and it is possible that we will not be able to “fix” our problems with a strictly material-side approach. It is a little bit like a smoker who smokes two packs a day for thirty years and then develops cancer. The person can say ‘well, now I will rely on medicine to pump me full of poisons and cut out my tumor in order to make me well again, and damn those who are opposed to poisons, the hopeless idealists!’ In such a case, although we might agree that maybe the person should try chemotherapy and surgery, we would be absolute fools to pretend that the cancer was somehow an inevitable result of normal living. of course we would tell the person “stop smoking now, and you never should have done it in the first place” I think our whole modern world is a reflection of the cancerous overgrowth of certain qualities in our spiritual life, and now we are sort of stuck with the consequences. DaveScot says that increasing the use of fossil fuels is not a by-product of improved living standards but a cause of it. I am not sure about that. I have to think about it, but it seems clear that if the population problem were solved, then a lot of this would become less desperate. Like DAveScot says, a stable population of about a billion using clean energy sources for a high living standard is an ideal. Sounds good to me. How do we get there from here without doing harm? How did we get here? Why are there so many people in the world? Is it because fewer are dying from epidemic diseases? This is probably a result of a whole complex of developments, which I cannot claim to have any deep understanding of. I will have to leave those speculations to others more educated.

DaveScot: you say that the increased consumption of fossil fuels is the precondition of elevated standards of living, not the result. While this may be historically correct, it does not follow from this that other people in the developing world must follow this path. It is certainly only one path toward higher living standards. You mention as an alternative the use of solar power collected and directed ( I have never heard of this so pardon the clumsy restatement! ) I think this is an interesting idea, but it seems to take as a given the notion that people can only develop by using lots of energy. This is, in my opinion, a one-sided view. There are many avenues of development for human beings on earth: material, social, cultural, spiritual. THe material is grossly over-emphasized, and I point to the fact that in the West, our greatest and most enduring cultural and spiritual achievements were accomplished during a time in which the material culture of the vast majority of Europeans was rudimentary, candlelit! Now, we have an inverse of this condition: zero cultural output (or abysmal) powered by an almost unbelieveable level of technological sophistication. Every thug has a cell phone and access to the world of information on the internet. Whence this paradox if power and energy and material prosperity are so central?

doramia,
Cooney left in June of last year. I still find this piece notable for what it leaves out.