Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Global Warming: Here We Go Again

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The Discovery Institute is backing public school related legislation in Ohio calling for teaching the controversy in evolution and global warming. By naming global warming evolution isn’t getting “singled out” so this weakens the argument that teaching criticisms of consensus science is religiously inspired.

Of course the usual suspects at the Panda’s Thumb still claim the global warming anti-alarmists are religiously inspired. Give me a break. The global warming issue is about economics not religion.

A great many scientists have claimed that global warming is a fact (it is) and while conceding it is cyclical to some degree (it is) they say that human activity is accelerating it (it is). The problem is there’s no consensus on what we need to do to stop it (or even if we can stop it at all), what it will cost to stop it, who will bear the economic cost of stopping it, and what it would cost if we did nothing and just dealt with the consequences as they arose. We don’t have enough information to make an informed economic decision. Scientists might think it’s okay to run off half cocked like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling and throwing any money they can beg, borrow, or steal at the problem but businessmen don’t think it’s okay to do that. They need to know the cost of action, the cost of inaction, and who pays those costs. President Bush in his great wisdom has said as much. We need better information to make an informed decision about what to do.

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The idea about using "nuclear winter" technology to thwart global-warming is a real hoot! ---- Anyway, considering that the surroundings get very hot, very quickly, when you dig a deep hole towards the centre of the Earth, and conversely, very cold, very quickly, when you fly up into the sky, isn't it rather surprising, unlikely, actually astounding, that this thin layer we live on is as stable in temperature as it is? That the temperature goes up a degree or so, or down a degree or so, during intervals of hundreds or thousands of years, is almost beyond conjured reason. Those degrees are caused by how many gigatons of humanity's flatulences against how many gigatons of fire, earth, air, and water going about their every day business? If that sort of thing turns out to be deemed merely "intelligent" or "anthropic" or "teleological", what word could express the explosion of life on that thin layer? Surely the "intelligent" in ID is a minimalist notion used purely for pursuasive purpose. Let's not forget there is much more to that intelligence. Emily Dickinson, probably the greatest American poet, wrote about truth... Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightening to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind---eebrom
July 8, 2006
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Bravo to posts #4 & #5, very funny. If you get the Wall Street Journal, pickup today's July 8 weekedend edition or if a subscriber to the WSJ online, see this link... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115231740738201276.html?mod=opinion_main_featured_stories_hs It's an interview with Bjorn Lomborg. His latest project is to get world leaders to prioritize projects like disease fighting and fixing global warming, and spend where the cost-benefit analysis says you'll get the most bang for your buck. Here are a couple of excerpts: "Bjorn Lomborg busted -- and that is the only word for it -- onto the world scene in 2001 with the publication of his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." A one-time Greenpeace enthusiast, he'd originally planned to disprove those who said the environment was getting better. He failed. And to his credit, his book said so, supplying a damning critique of today's environmental pessimism. Carefully researched, it offered endless statistics -- from official sources such as the U.N. -- showing that from biodiversity to global warming, there simply were no apocalypses in the offing. "Our history shows that we solve more problems than we create," he tells me. For his efforts, Mr. Lomborg was labeled a heretic by environmental groups -- whose fundraising depends on scaring the jeepers out of the public -- and became more hated by these alarmists than even (if possible) President Bush.... ..."In 2004, he invited eight of the world's top economists -- including four Nobel Laureates -- to Copenhagen, where they were asked to evaluate the world's problems, think of the costs and efficiencies attached to solving each, and then produce a prioritized list of those most deserving of money. The well-publicized results (and let it be said here that Mr. Lomborg is no slouch when it comes to promoting himself and his work) were stunning. While the economists were from varying political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of good; so that project dropped to the bottom."...russ
July 8, 2006
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And of course, with the increase in mutations, something new and beneficial to survival just might evolve! Maybe even something useful for surviving global warming.Mung
July 8, 2006
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If liberal scientists really think it's that disastrous why haven't they embraced my suggestion that we take what they told us in previous decades about "nuclear winter" and use that to eliminate global warming? Surely if 1000 nuclear detonations all at once (or whatever the number was) can bring about global cooling of such proportion as to wipe out most of the life on the planet then surely some smaller number would halt global warming in its tracks. And we already have so many nuclear weapons we're dismantling them just to make a less dangerous stockpile. So you kill two birds with one stone there, so to speak. The downside is some miniscule increased risk of cancer around the world. No biggie. Take all the money saved by not implimenting expensive schemes to reduce greenhouse gases and pour it into cancer research, prevention, and treatment.DaveScot
July 8, 2006
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IMO, global-warming, at least as touted in Canada, is fundamentalist religion to the extreme.

Back in the late 80s a certain Canadian alarmist proclaimed that the oceans would rise something like a metre by the year 2000. Having just bought property where the road home would go through an area just about that height above high tide, I got all the data and did my own statistics for warming. Funny, no such warming trend. But, I didn't use the fancy "models", just the numbers.

A month ago we went on a "trek" to the Arctic Ocean -- even took my bathing suit to try the globally-warmed Acrtic water. Should have known better, the water was as stiff as ice. Not just at the shoreline (at Prudhoe Bay, AK) but to the northern horizon. Bummer. Met a Inupiaq fisherman in Barrow who was heading south to fish because there was not any open water to land a whale. Two years running.

On the way to the North we also checked out many glaciers. Alarmists here wouldn't like us to know there are large advancing glaciers. In fact, in College Fjord, there are large advancing, and retreating, glaciers within a dozen miles or so. Global warming (on a relatively short time scale) causes glacier retreat?

Whether we like it or not, humans, including scientists, demonstrate a history of freaking out. The latest issue of "Western Standard-July 31" (Conservative Canaj'n magazine) has an article entitled "Global Warming Meltdown". They point out "a history of freaking out" starting with Charles MacKay in 1841 publishing his famous and enduring work on mass hysteria. Remember Orson Welles(1938)? Dangerous DDT? Global Over-Population? A new Ice Age? Acid Rain? The Ozone Hole?

How long the present freak-out with global-warming will last, is anybody's guess.

Trying to reason with colleagues about global-warming is very similar to the evolution arguments. Steadfast faith in misinformation is almost impossible to break. Beats me.

eebrom
July 7, 2006
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Oh, and here's a link to Newsweek's 1975 "Global Cooling" article: http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm I guess it's a good thing we didn't go off half-cocked 30 years ago when we discovered the earth was cooling, uh, er, before we discovered it was actually warming.russ
July 7, 2006
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This Michael Crichton speech was linked here a while back, but the following excerpt seems apropos: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html "Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the [climate] modelmakers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd. Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam? Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses? But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS… None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about."russ
July 7, 2006
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