Yes, I understand all that ... but why do you start threads against those ideas? How does it conflict with your worldview? Or are you just interested in seeing that science is always portrayed accurately?
Did you read the rest of the post that you quoted? I answered your question towards the end of that post. It is the last post on page 1 of this thread.
[RQUOTER]Climate Chief was Told of False Glacier Claims Before Copenhagen The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt. Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists. The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions. Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure. He told The Times on January 22 that he had only known about the error for a few days. He said: “I became aware of this when it was reported in the media about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known. Nobody brought it to my attention. There were statements, but we never looked at this 2035 number.” Asked whether he had deliberately kept silent about the error to avoid embarrassment at Copenhagen, he said: “That’s ridiculous. It never came to my attention before the Copenhagen summit. It wasn’t in the public sphere.” However, a prominent science journalist said that he had asked Dr Pachauri about the 2035 error last November. Pallava Bagla, who writes for Science journal, said he had asked Dr Pachauri about the error. He said that Dr Pachauri had replied: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.” The Himalayan glaciers are so thick and at such high altitude that most glaciologists believe they would take several hundred years to melt at the present rate. Some are growing and many show little sign of change. Dr Pachauri had previously dismissed a report by the Indian Government which said that glaciers might not be melting as much as had been feared. He described the report, which did not mention the 2035 error, as “voodoo science”. Mr Bagla said he had informed Dr Pachauri that Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University and a leading glaciologist, had dismissed the 2035 date as being wrong by at least 300 years. Professor Cogley believed the IPCC had misread the date in a 1996 report which said the glaciers could melt significantly by 2350. Mr Pallava interviewed Dr Pachauri again this week for Science and asked him why he had decided to overlook the error before the Copenhagen summit. In the taped interview, Mr Pallava asked: “I pointed it out [the error] to you in several e-mails, several discussions, yet you decided to overlook it. Was that so that you did not want to destabilise what was happening in Copenhagen?” Dr Pachauri replied: “Not at all, not at all. As it happens, we were all terribly preoccupied with a lot of events. We were working round the clock with several things that had to be done in Copenhagen. It was only when the story broke, I think in December, we decided to, well, early this month — as a matter of fact, I can give you the exact dates — early in January that we decided to go into it and we moved very fast. “And within three or four days, we were able to come up with a clear and a very honest and objective assessment of what had happened. So I think this presumption on your part or on the part of any others is totally wrong. We are certainly never — and I can say this categorically — ever going to do anything other than what is truthful and what upholds the veracity of science.” Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. [/RQUOTER] What a bunch of hucksters these people are. The frauds and deceptions just keep right on coming. Of course most of the controversies up until now have been centered around foreign scientists and United Nations types like Dr Pachauri. But everyone should be prepared for similar revelations focused around US scientists and bureaucrats in the days and months to come. This is not over yet. Not by a long-shot.
MaJorgeMan, I am worried that you do not see the truest threat to your pet industry on the horizon: fusion. Forget AGW, which will never result in meaningful group action from humanity anyway. If you don't start lobbying hard against fusion right now, you and your oil industry colleagues could be facing sub-criminal profits in a couple of decades. That would be very sad.
Funny . . .you guys are as dismissive of this . . . . reminds me of Creationist dismissing evolution Amazing. . .when it is YOU IDEALS it is ok to be dismissive of those that DARE question them . . .they are obviously morons just an interesting observation Rocket River
It appears that the topic of this thread, including the continuing revelations about the misrepresentations made by the AGW alarmists in the UN and the scientific community, makes you sufficiently uncomfortable that the best reply you can come up with is to try to spin it off onto some unrelated tangent. If you want to start a thread on fusion energy, go ahead. Personally, I think that would be a very interesting topic for discussion. But as you know quite well, that is not the topic of this thread. How hard would it be for you to just admit that a number of the scientists and UN bureaucrats who are proponents of these theories have demonstrated themselves to be untrustworthy, and have raised real concerns about the credibility of their work, and the theories and agendas that their work supports? No one is proposing an end to research in the area of climate science. However, it is important that research and analysis related to climate science be conducted in an open, honest and thorough manner going forward. It is unfortunate that this has not been consistently the case in recent years. But now that these and other scandalous revelations have been disclosed, surely it is now time to reform the conduct of this branch of science to enable it to regain the credibility that it needs to be regarded as a trustworthy and reliable branch of science in the years to come.
You know, you can throw all this "evidence" at me, unsubstantiated or not. As intelligent as we regard ourselves to be in regards to the cosmos, much less the sun, we are utterly ignorant. Every single bit of our science is theory. Even the "laws" such as those of thermodynamics or even the speed of light, are now showing signs of being bogus.
Not clear who you mean. Based on other posts you've made, wrt science, I assume you are saying the science-friendly folks here are dismissive of those trying to "disprove" climate change, right? I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm only dismissive of people or groups who have shown themselves to be completely and demonstrably disingenuous when it comes to discussing evidence -- call them cherry pickers, or idunno, oil industry toadies. A couple of posters here fit that description like a glove and they're just trolling. That one congressman from Oklahoma, Inhof or whatever... truly he is trolling or just really dumb. But yeah, be skeptical. It's a huge and complex problem, and anyway, the horse is probably way out of the barn anyway.
In related news, Bill Gates has now teamed up with David Keith. Gates is putting up $4.5 million for geoengineering research, and I believe Keith and Ken Caldeira will be deciding how to hand it out. http://www.calgaryherald.com/entert...ical+strategy+reflect+rays/2491277/story.html http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/8...nge-bill-gates-funds-geoengineering-research/
I'm a bit wary of geoengineering. Sure we're doing it unconsciously already, but it should ultimately be used deliberately as a last resort. Humpty Dumpty and all that. If we're past the tipping point, maybe it will be last resort type of measures.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I'm curious about what you've been reading or hearing that's making you wary of geoengineering?
so your saying that you think global warming exists. but its at no fault of man what so ever. that since its happened for thousands of years already that we havent perhaps sped up the progress at least a little. seems like if in fact you really think those things, that you would include in your enlightened opinion how we can stop it still, while you are trying to push your agenda. because i mean really your kind of wasting your time pointing out to us on a basketball ball message board about how all those scientists with there masters and phds in different types of science that they are really wrong and how the first time this planet has had an intelligent species here doing things to it that have never been done before has completely zero impact.
I think the problem of geoengineering is that we don't know the full consequence of what we are doing. It's possible that some minor calculation errors end up cooling the earth by 50 degrees rather than 5 degrees, or that the effect lasts a lot longer than we had hoped, or some other unintended disastrous side effect occurs. The climate system is complicated and delicate with numerous positive and negative feedback loops, we don't know for sure how it will respond to human interference. A little off topic, I went to a lecture by a renowned atmosphere scientist a few years ago. He was talking about the possibility of geoengineering the Mars to make it habitable. From what I remembered, by putting powerful green house gases into the Mars atmosphere, it is possible to raise the temperature by 70 degrees or more, and then the CO2 and water vapor will be released to the Mars atmosphere. Then we have to remove the powerful green house gases from the atmosphere to counter the green house effect of the released gases so that Mars does not become Venus. The idea of geoengineering is fascinating, but I wouldn't want to try it out on earth first, unless the situation is really dire.
Everything about frontier science reminds you of the science vs. religion debate for some reason. Not really surprising, since you have a very poor grasp of the concept and the differences between each. The one thing that runs through all forms of false/phony science and absolute/true religion, however, is pride and arrogance that prevents people from believing they can be wrong, etc. So if that is what you're commenting about, then you're 100% spot ON about the similarities.
Exactly. The earth has several complex systems that operate at several different levels of scope. Ideas such as fertilizing the ocean with iron or introducing bioengineered strains of plants or bacteria won't have the exact desired effects. The ideas are cool (many seem like they can be controlled), but I'm not going to pretend that I know the models they're running and their degree of confidence in it's breadth.
Geoengineering is a very broad term. With respect to the climate change issue on earth it’s sometimes divided into two general categories, methods for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and methods for deflecting the sun’s radiation away from earth. The methods for removing CO2 include using scrubbers to remove it from the ambient air and carbon capture and sequestration. The methods for deflecting the sun’s radiation include a proposal to spray large amounts of sea water into the air to create large white clouds that would reflect sunlight. There are certainly questions about how effective some of these would be, and how much they would cost, - and note that both of these questions could be answered to a significant extent by doing more research - but these are quite low risk options. (Keep in mind that all of the options that involve only deflecting the Sun’s radiation are temporary measures because they don’t address some of the secondary issues, like ocean acidification.) There are groups however, that are trying to demonise the very term geoengineering. I think they see real science, and eoengineering in particular, as a threat to their ability to control the issue, and if they can’t control the issue then they lose a lot of their ability to generate money and political power from it. So I urge you to beware of the wolves in sheep's clothing. Some of these groups that many members of the general public think are the good guys are really very bad and very dangerous guys. http://cientifica.eu/blog/2009/05/geoengineering-more-political-and-moral-than-scientific/ Here are a couple of other related articles. http://fixtheclimate.com/component-1/the-solutions-new-research/climate-engineering/ http://www.calgaryherald.com/health...arming+panel+crossing+line/2487264/story.html http://people.ucalgary.ca/~keith/Misc/AC technology Feb 2009.pdf
For the two approaches you mentioned, removing CO2 would be the safest, but so far it is not economically viable. The cost of CO2 sequestration is still too high. If further research could bring the cost down, that would be the best way to solve our problem. As for blocking the sunlight, it is not as simple as it seems. Many things depend on sun light, from wind pattern to ocean current, it is possible that a minor change in the sun's radiation can lead to significant changes in these, something like El Nino, and result in disastrous change in local weather, either flood or drought. The probability might be low, but we just don't know enough about the whole climate system for sure. Again more research needs to be done before we actually do anything. I doubt that the main problem for geoengineering is those who demonize it. IMO geoengineering is still too young a field and the science is simply not concrete enough. If we do something on a global scale without knowing the full consequences, chances are bad things will happen. I'm all for more research in geoengineering, and maybe a good solution will come to us down the road. But before that, I wouldn't want to rush anything on the only planet we can live on.
