climate change times are a changin'

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

999.

Yeah, we all know where Cain got his cockamamie tax plan from.

IIRC, the cheats to get fusion before 2050 were "power to the masses" or "you don't deserve it", depending on version.

[Kepler]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Yeah, we all know where Cain got his cockamamie tax plan from.

IIRC, the cheats to get fusion before 2050 were "power to the masses" or "you don't deserve it", depending on version.

My God, I was addicted to the first version of SimCity. I think I played 24-hours straight once on nothing but beer and circus peanuts.

I still have a soft spot for low density industrial zoning.

[trixR4kids]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

http://grist.org/science/when-someon...-this-cartoon/

[FreshFish]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

A really good public policy prescription in today's Wall St. Journal. I hope it's not behind the paywall, it is worth reading in its entirety. It is a way to filter out the arguments between climate change zealots and climate change deniers and re-focus the debate on the actual underlying science in all its nuances and uncertainties.

Tomorrow’s March for Science will draw many thousands in support of evidence-based policy making and against the politicization of science. A concrete step toward those worthy goals would be to convene a “Red Team/Blue Team” process for climate science, one of the most important and contentious issues of our age.

The national-security community pioneered the “Red Team” methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce—or at least understand—uncertainties. The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design and major industrial operations. It is very different and more rigorous than traditional peer review, which is usually confidential and always adjudicated, rather than public and moderated.

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science. At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate’s natural variability. At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent—and unexpected—slowing of global sea-level rise over the past two decades. [underline added]

....We scientists must better portray not only our certainties but also our uncertainties, and even things we may never know. Not doing so is an advisory malpractice that usurps society’s right to make choices fully informed by risk, economics and values. Moving from oracular consensus statements to an open adversarial process would shine much-needed light on the scientific debates.

....

... Here’s how it might work: The focus would be a published scientific report meant to inform policy such as the U.N.’s Summary for Policymakers or the U.S. Government’s National Climate Assessment. A Red Team of scientists would write a critique of that document and a Blue Team would rebut that critique. Further exchanges of documents would ensue to the point of diminishing returns. A commission would coordinate and moderate the process and then hold hearings to highlight points of agreement and disagreement, as well as steps that might resolve the latter. The process would unfold in full public view: the initial report, the exchanged documents and the hearings.

....

The outcome of a Red/Blue exercise for climate science is not preordained, which makes such a process all the more valuable. It could reveal the current consensus as weaker than claimed. Alternatively, the consensus could emerge strengthened if Red Team criticisms were countered effectively. But whatever the outcome, we scientists would have better fulfilled our responsibilities to society, and climate policy discussions would be better informed. For those reasons, all who march to advocate policy making based upon transparent apolitical science should support a climate science Red Team exercise.

While "97% of scientists agree" that climate change is occurring, a far smaller number than that agree that it is primarily driven by human activity. It would be good to get some of these distinctions in the public record. too many people are shouting past each other, not even realizing that each of them are talking about entirely different elements of the overall situation.

[jerphisch]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

While "97% of scientists agree" that climate change is occurring, a far smaller number than that agree that it is primarily driven by human activity.

Wrong. You completely *&@$%^@*&$ moronic ninkompo0p.

[GrinCDXX]

Wrong. You completely *&@$%^@*&$ moronic ninkompo0p.

His signature line should simply read "He asserted without evidence."

[Kepler]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

A really good public policy prescription in today's Wall St. Journal. I hope it's not behind the paywall, it is worth reading in its entirety. It is a way to filter out the arguments between climate change zealots and climate change deniers and re-focus the debate on the actual underlying science in all its nuances and uncertainties.

They're called scientists.

You're either a rogue (Rex Tillerson, don't you have something you should be doing?) or a knave. I know you read nothing but a steady diet of rightwing crapola, and you're as creduluous as the poor sap who was still smoking 12 packs a day in the 80s because he believed Philip Morris was a morally neutral entity, but for god sake you fool, is it that you don't have kids, or that you just don't give a f-ck about them?

Stop threatening my eventual grandchildrens' lives, you vapid toady. If you must participate in public dialog, go back to college and this time try to learn something besides the fine art of sounding like a Dartmouth Review twit, you vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert.

[joecct]

They're called scientists.

You're either a rogue (Rex Tillerson, don't you have something you should be doing?) or a knave. I know you read nothing but a steady diet of rightwing crapola, and you're as creduluous as the poor sap who was still smoking 12 packs a day in the 80s because he believed Philip Morris was a morally neutral entity, but for god sake you fool, is it that you don't have kids, or that you just don't give a f-ck about them?

Stop threatening my eventual grandchildrens' lives, you vapid toady. If you must participate in public dialog, go back to college and this time try to learn something besides the fine art of sounding like a Dartmouth Review twit, you vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert.

Are you talking about Rex or talking to FreshFish?

If it's the latter, you're way over the top and tremendously disrespectful.

[Kepler]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Are you talking about Rex or talking to FreshFish?

If it's the latter, you're way over the top and tremendously disrespectful.

"Didn't you guys ever go to Sunday school?"

[GrinCDXX]

Are you talking about Rex or talking to FreshFish?

If it's the latter, you're way over the top and tremendously disrespectful.

Take your crocodile tears elsewhere.

[FreshFish]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

They're called scientists.

You're either a rogue (Rex Tillerson, don't you have something you should be doing?) or a knave. I know you read nothing but a steady diet of rightwing crapola, and you're as creduluous as the poor sap who was still smoking 12 packs a day in the 80s because he believed Philip Morris was a morally neutral entity, but for god sake you fool, is it that you don't have kids, or that you just don't give a f-ck about them?

Stop threatening my eventual grandchildrens' lives, you vapid toady. If you must participate in public dialog, go back to college and this time try to learn something besides the fine art of sounding like a Dartmouth Review twit, you vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert.

This incoherent deranged rant is a perfect example of totally uninformed fact-free name-calling that interferes with people's ability to have a reasonable conversation based on actual scientific findings. A classic climate zealot that disguises his lack of education in the nuances of the real science by the passion of his rhetoric. You think that the louder you shout, the more convincing you get?

Wouldn't a person who was genuinely confident that the science truly backed his point of view be able to reason calmly and rationally by reviewing the actual data? don't tell me other scientists' conclusions, show me the data from which those conclusions were derived. I'm open-minded to be persuaded, but yelling at me is not at all persuasive, it just makes you look like a jerk.

There are plenty of people who are neither climate change deniers nor climate change zealots that are frustrated by the lack of reliable evidence put forth by either side. You have scientists on one side fudging data and retrofitting models; that hardly provides reliable evidence. You have people offering no evidence at all yet claiming to know there is nothing to worry about.

Climate has been changing before human beings ever set foot on this planet. Millenia ago, there were higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere than we have now. Yet the continents were not covered by oceans then. Plants thrived in abundance. There was more species diversity then than now.

How much does human activity contribute to the background baseline climate change that already exists independent of human activity? Suppose, without human activity, we would have entered a period of global cooling? Those are evidence-based questions for which we need reliable, evidence-based answers. If it turns out that, without fudging the data to get desired results, without building complicated retro-fitted models with little actual predictive value, we can develop a consensus based on actual findings and actual data, then that would generate widespread public support for corrective actions. If you are really so confident, then you'd welcome such an outcome, no?

[GrinCDXX]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

While "97% of scientists agree" that climate change is occurring, a far smaller number than that agree that it is primarily driven by human activity.

don't tell me other scientists' conclusions, show me the data from which those conclusions were derived.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Are you talking about Rex or talking to FreshFish?

If it's the latter, you're way over the top and tremendously disrespectful.

I thought his response was fairly restrained given the malicious lunacy of what Fish wrote.

[Slap Shot]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

This incoherent deranged rant...

The ironing is too effing good to be true.

[FreshFish]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Wrong.

Thank you very much for posting this link. It is very instructive as to how the debate has become so polarized.

If you dig down into their actual data and methodology, here is what you find:
-- a committee of 12 people on an American Chemical Society board issue a statement.
-- the American Chemical Society has 157,000 members
-- therefore, all 157,000 members must automatically agree with every detail of every aspect asserted by that 12-person board.
Now, you add up all the scientific societies there are, total up all their membership, and voila! 97.5% of scientists agree.

If you actually knew scientists, you can't even get 97.5% of them to agree on the proper way to tell time. For a person who is genuinely curious about who is actually credible and who is making stuff up, well, might not a level as high as 97.5% seem a little overdone?

Actually, it is entirely credible to me that 97.5% of scientists would agree in climate change in general.

If you actually dig down into survey data of actual individual members, however, you get a more nuanced picture; not every member of every association actually does agree that the major or driving factor of climate change must necessarily be solely caused by human activity. Notice how many qualifiers I threw in there: human activity has some effect, how much or how little, how does it manifest, how do we best correct it, what if it costs so much to correct it that it might be more feasible to accept it and adapt, instead? The last one completely accepts each and every argument about the cause and instead differs greatly on the response.

How much would it cost to adjust, compared to how much would it cost to comply?

Is that really such an unreasonable question? Who is going to pay for it, and how?