Climate Change -- conspiracy theory or is it time we all drive a Prius?

Quote: AZDuffman

Meanwhile some dope buys the "carbon credits" the trees are producing.

Tell me again *I* am crazy for calling it a huge racket?

I will say that the "solutions" proposed to a real problem can be a huge racket. It doesn't mean that climate change isn't real.

Quote: rxwine

I don't think there is a real manmade climate change debate. Not in the science community anyway. If a consensus is 97%, that is not a debate, that is one side getting crushed.

I guess you could say there is a debate on evolution happening and on whether gambling probability is working for the casinos based on a small percentage of people. Look at all the stuff that goes on the other board. In most cases I would be ashamed to say there is a real debate in some of those topics, but that doesn't stop some people from their winning sessions at baccarat from improbable means, or something else.

I don't think 3% is much above the actual disbelief you get on practically anything. So is that really much of a debate? If I discount some on each side of the debate as clueless, and some as paid-off experts, the "NO" side gets hurt even worse. Is there even a credible 1% left?

FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD!

Just type that as it will save time.

Me? I prefer to use my own judgment. At a minimum a person with intellectual curiosity should ask how 97% can agree on anything that can't be proven when rarely so many can agree on anything.

Quote: boymimbo

The creator of the Weather Channel has a degree in journalism and it not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. Most weather folks you see on the air do not have credentials as meteorologists nor do they have degrees in science.
.

The point is, person after person who
are in the weather business for a living,
for decades, just don't see climate change
as being man made. Climate change is
real and has been ongoing for millions
of years. Don't be afraid, it's OK..

Just because he is in the business doesn't make him an expert on climate change. I'm not afraid. I'm confident that a solution is coming and that humanity will reign.

Quote: AZDuffman

FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD!

Just type that as it will save time.

Me? I prefer to use my own judgment. At a minimum a person with intellectual curiosity should ask how 97% can agree on anything that can't be proven when rarely so many can agree on anything.

\

You can say the same thing based on anything empirical in nature. As I've stated before the chemistry of heat absorption of key greenhouse gases have been proven both experimentally and in theory. And therefore it is very easy to make the conclusion that an increase of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases causes the atmosphere to get hotter.

What is at argument is (1) the cause (2) alternate causes and (3) the feedback factors.

On (1) there is no doubt in any reasonable person's mind that the increase in carbon is man-made. Why? We burn it. It can be and is measured.
(2) all outside influences (the sun, volcanoes, cloud cover, etc) have been accounted for in the models. The amount of light reaching the earth, for example, from the sun, is very well known.
(3) feedback factors such as ocean currents, ice cover (albedo), carbon sinks (the oceans), etc are what give the variability in the atmosphere which can result in shorter term cooling trends.

When you add it all together, you get a consortium of scientists who all agree that climate change is real. The other 3%, in my opinion, use non-science (local phenomena, short term trends and variability) to dispute AGW usually because of distrust for the science community or have economic investment or have fear of future policies that may affect them.

Sure where your 97% figure is coming from. The quote below is from Scientific American, Jan 2015 issue from a poll taken late in 2014. In particular note that only 77% of the Scientists think it is a serious problem.

"In 2014, the vast majority (87 percent) of scientists said that human activity is driving global warming, and yet only half the American public ascribed to that view. And 77 percent of scientists said climate change is a very serious problem. In comparison, only 33 percent of the general public said it was a very serious problem in a 2013 poll."

here

Quote: above

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

Quote: boymimbo

here

That is the technically flawed analysis that has been presented here before. The writers of the paper when they didn't get the results they wanted from reading the published papers contacted the writers and asked them for their opinion not allowing the research to speak for itself as it should in any true science. Since, as been discussed here numerous times before, to admit that you don't support global warming as a scientist has major funding implications so the pressure to conform is huge. You are also ignoring the 35% of the papers that took no position. We could ask why were they scared to take a position.

Regardless the poll I posted from Scientific American is 3 or more years more current than that old study and the last 3 years the Arctic ice pack has been increasing.

3 years of increasing arctic ice pack is not really meaningful. Scientific American is using the AAAS study, which polled 3,748 of its members to get its 87% figure. Of those 3,748 members who were polled (the poll was asking questions about many beliefs, not just climate change), only 270 of them were scientists in the field of Earth Science with the remainder covering other fields (about half were in Biomedical science).

In that poll nonetheless 87% said they believed it was caused by man, 9% believe it was caused by natural patterns while 3% said there was no evidence.

So, even in that poll, 96% of respondents believed that climate change was happening with a 90/10 split that it is man-made. Given that 3,478 of the 3,748 of those scientists are not receiving funding for climate change, I would say it's a pretty convincing majority even amount those who don't study climate change for a living (which comprises at least 93% of the respondents).

Quote: kenarman

Sure where your 97% figure is coming from. The quote below is from Scientific American, Jan 2015 issue from a poll taken late in 2014. In particular note that only 77% of the Scientists think it is a serious problem.

"In 2014, the vast majority (87 percent) of scientists said that human activity is driving global warming, and yet only half the American public ascribed to that view. And 77 percent of scientists said climate change is a very serious problem. In comparison, only 33 percent of the general public said it was a very serious problem in a 2013 poll."

Well, that article is mainly concerned with the sad state of affairs of science vs. public opinion and in no way is anti-climate change.

"Big Gap between What Scientists Say and Americans Think about Climate Change "

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-gap-between-what-scientists-say-and-americans-think-about-climate-change/