OT: Global warming, my butt

… it is important to realize that climate scientists do have an economic interest in the outcome of the debate. Many of them totally depend on grants – both governmental and private – to support themselves and maintain their positions.

To keep grant money flowing there must be problems to solve, and they must also persuade those doling out the grant money that the problems they wish to solve are sufficiently important that their programs should be funded.

Of, if they are employed by a government agency, the issues that their office is addressing need to be pressing and urgent and vitally important; else why should the government continue to pay your salary.

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I could go on with much more, but having spent time in a government agency doing risk assessment work in the time when the Superfund program was getting off the ground, to think that government researches, with jobs, grants, and prestige at stake, approach their works dispassionately and objectively …

well let’s just say I got a rude education in how “science” really happens in the public sector.

has TREMENDOUS interest in creating great fear about global warming. He is a big venture capitalist for a bunch of “green” technology companies and the like. I don’t get why people give him a free pass when he’s exactly the same as an oil exec arguing against global warming. He claims his investments are his way of offsetting his own big emissions caused by his multiple big houses. No Al, it’s hypocrisy.

And no, I’m not arguing that global warming doesn’t exist. Just exposing Al Gore.

As a whole has had an incredibly warm winter this year. It’s just that in the places where people live (The US, Europe) it has been colder than normal which makes it seem otherwise. But in the extreme north (and even here in Calgary) it has been very very mild compared to the norm.

Yes, the coastal cities are flooded, certain islands go under, but what’s bad about this for me and the rest of the world? More food means happier times for the poor countries, or we can just make America even fatter.

I’m not sure I remember us getting to -22f (30C) this year. We are normally good for 4 or 5 of those.

We had a ton of really early snow in October. Since then its been very tame.

That if there were no humans on Earth, the Earth would still be warming right now as part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling. It’s the rate of change that is concerning, and which far outstrips anything else seen in observable history.

why aren’t there dinosaurs anymore?

With a reaffirmed and timely answer:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/03/08/dinosaurs.asteroid/index.html?hpt=Sbin

But I don’t get it. The message can be correct even if the messenger is hypocritical. Besides, Al Gore may be the public face, but he’s hardly the foremost authority on the subject.

being straightforward and they aren’t living up to their promises? don’t blame the scientists and the activists b/c Al Gore has a screw loose (i generally like the guy, but he’s a career politician, so what do we really expect?).

Seriously though, you don’t like the regional counselor for public safety, (or hippies I would venture). What does that have to do with climate change?

good luck, hope everyone stays safe

And here is an excellent, scientifically based book written for the layman describing the potential and the limitations of renewable energy. Sustainable Energy without the hot air. Free pdf download of whole book.

By I saw this HD clip on Youtube. Pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvCUmeoHpw

About how NASA foolishly wastes money on glamour projects instead of focusing on things that could actually help mankind like say, destroying asteroids that could one day hit us.

but humans can change and adapt to climate change. Migration can and will occur out of areas that are no longer habitable. The sea level will not rise so ferociously quick that it swallows millions of people. This is a problem, that if true, will creep up on us over the next 100 years. An asteroid could appear at a moment’s notice and our world would be over.

I’m all for cleaner energy, but that doesn’t mean carbon offsets or carbon trading. That’s just a way for people like Al Gore to profiteer off this mess. It means getting off of oil with viable electric vehicles and using nuclear energy instead of coal. The problem is that the oil and coal industry will cling to what they have til it runs out. Gotta squeeze every last dime out of the stuff. I’d be extremely surprised if within 20 years, we aren’t all driving some kind of mostly electric vehicles.

Just because Athiests deny God exists, doesn’t mean he does.

Of course they pick the side that benefits them.

The real problem I see with all this, is that while the “evidence” might seem convincing, we are on an extremely short term time scale here in terms of the Earth. It’s what we like to refer to here at RR as a Small Sample Size problem. I agree, cleaner energy is a good thing, but to force a change through projections that aren’t even as good as Bill James’s yearly projections seems kind of silly. Al Gore’s entire presentation has been shown to be full of crap at this point, which is where this whole movement came from. I know there’s other data, but I have concerns about that as well. When temperature is taken inside cities, the temp is going to be higher on average because of general heat absorption of the surrounding buildings/roads/etc. I mean, when you really get down to it, is the earth warming because of carbon in the atmosphere, or is it something else? Could be all the cities absorb more heat from the sun, which in turn traps more heat on the planet. Could be that the sun is entering a hotter cycle. I just don’t buy that in a system as complex as the Earth, that the first answer is the correct answer.