Global Warming

[Bong30]

The reason for Global warming is......













Mostly











not Human



















Ready

















The Sun.....

some CMEs, a Solar maximum, some green house gases (natural and unnatural) walla heat up....

solar minimum, few CMEs some green house gases...Ice age

take your Pick.....


Sun is the reason for everything.

Life
Weather
Heat
shit it holds the solar system together....

It is gone in 4.5 billion years.... you libs better figure out a way to save it.

[Bong30]

Is MIT an OK source?


They dont have Cars on Pluto? do they? Just evil Conservative on Pluto drive cars......


Earth going through global warming

pluto going through global warming


what do earth and Pluto have in Common?


THE SUN......


come on guys.........earl got your tounge?

Pluto is undergoing global warming, researchers find
October 9, 2002


BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--Pluto is undergoing global warming, as evidenced by a three-fold increase in the planet's atmospheric pressure during the past 14 years, a team of astronomers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Williams College, the University of Hawaii, Lowell Observatory and Cornell University announced in a press conference today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's (AAS) Division for Planetary Sciences in Birmingham, AL.


The team, led by James Elliot, professor of planetary astronomy at MIT and director of MIT's Wallace Observatory, made this finding by watching the dimming of a star when Pluto passed in front of it Aug. 20. The team carried out observations using eight telescopes at Mauna Kea Observatory, Haleakala, Lick Observatory, Lowell Observatory and Palomar Observatory. Data were successfully recorded at all sites.


An earlier attempt to observe an occultation of Pluto on July 19 in Chile was not highly successful. Observations were made from only two sites with small telescopes because the giant telescopes and other small telescopes involved lost out to bad weather or from being in the wrong location that day. These two occultations were the first to be successfully observed for Pluto since 1988.


Elliot said the new results have surprised the observers, who as recently as July thought that Pluto's atmosphere may be cooling. "From the July data, we knew that Pluto's atmosphere had changed since 1988, but the August data allowed us to probe much more deeply into Pluto's atmosphere and have given us a more accurate picture of the changes that have occurred," he said.


Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that Pluto's global warming was "likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun's output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto."


Pluto's orbit is much more elliptical than that of the other planets, and its rotational axis is tipped by a large angle relative to its orbit. Both factors could contribute to drastic seasonal changes.


Since 1989, for example, the sun's position in Pluto's sky has changed by more than the corresponding change on the Earth that causes the difference between winter and spring. Pluto's atmospheric temperature varies between around minus 235 and minus 170 degrees Celsius, depending on the altitude above the surface. The main gas in Pluto's atmosphere is nitrogen, and Pluto has nitrogen ice on its surface that can evaporate into the atmosphere when it gets warmer, causing an increase in surface pressure. If the observed increase in the atmosphere also applies to the surface pressure--which is likely the case--this means that the average surface temperature of the nitrogen ice on Pluto has increased slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius over the past 14 years.


Marc Buie, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory, has been measuring the amount of sunlight reflected by Pluto. "The pressure increase can be explained if the average amount of sunlight reflected by the surface has decreased, which means that more heat is absorbed from the sun," he said. "This could be the reason that the pressure has been pumped up."


David Tholen, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii who measured the size of Pluto in the late 1980s using a series of occultations and eclipses involving Pluto's satellite, noted that even though Pluto was closest to the sun in 1989, a warming trend 13 years later shouldn't be unexpected. "It takes time for materials to warm up and cool off, which is why the hottest part of the day on Earth is usually around 2 or 3 p.m. rather than local noon, when sunlight is the most intense," Tholen said. Because Pluto's year is equal to about 250 Earth years, 13 years after Pluto's closest approach to the Sun is like 1:15 p.m. on Earth. "This warming trend on Pluto could easily last for another 13 years," Tholen estimated.


Pluto and Neptune's largest moon, Triton, are presently about the same distance from the sun, and each has a predominantly nitrogen atmosphere (with a surface pressure 100,000 times less than that on Earth), so one might expect similar processes to be occurring on these two bodies.


A 1997 occultation of a star by Triton revealed that its surface had warmed since the Voyager spacecraft first explored it in 1989. On Triton, "Voyager saw dark material rising up as much as 12 km above the surface, indicating some kind of eruptive activity," Elliot said. "There could be more massive activity on Pluto, since the changes observed in Pluto's atmosphere are much more severe. The change observed on Triton was subtle. Pluto's changes are not subtle."


Researchers study faraway objects through occultations--eclipse-like events in which a body (Pluto in this case) passes in front of a star, blocking the star's light from view. By recording the dimming of the starlight over time, astronomers can calculate the density, pressure and temperature of Pluto's atmosphere. Observing two or more occultations at different times provides researchers with information about changes in the planet's atmosphere. The structure and temperature of Pluto's atmosphere was first determined during an occultation in 1988. Pluto's brief pass in front of a different star on July 19 led researchers to believe that a drastic atmospheric change was under way, but it was unclear whether the atmosphere was warming up or cooling down.


The data resulting from this occultation, when Pluto passed in front of a star known as P131.1, led to the current results. "This is the first time that an occultation has allowed us to probe so deeply into Pluto's atmosphere with a large telescope, which gives a high spatial resolution of a few kilometers," Elliot said.


From MIT, in addition to Elliot, researchers involved were physics seniors Katie Carbonari, Erica McEvoy and Alison Klesman; Kelly Clancy, technical assistant in earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences (EAPS); EAPS graduate student Susan Kern, MIT graduate Joyance Meechai (S.B. 2000); David Osip, EAPS research scientist; Michael Person, EAPS graduate student; and aeronatucs and astronautics junior Shen Qu.


NASA is still deciding whether to send a spacecraft to Pluto, the only planet not yet observed at close range. The Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission in the New Horizons Program, if approved, would be launched in 2006 and would reach Pluto 10 years later. This mission will seek to answer questions about the surfaces, atmospheres, interiors and space environments of the solar system's outermost objects, including Pluto and its moon, Charon.


Researchers are looking forward to observing additional Pluto occultations in the years before the Pluto-Kuiper mission flies by Pluto. Of particular interest is the prospect of using SOFIA, a 2.5-meter airborne telescope being built by NASA in collaboration with the German space agency, for Pluto-occultation events when it begins operating in 2004. Edward Dunham, who leads the occultation effort at Lowell Observatory, also is leading a team that is building HIPO, a SOFIA instrument designed specifically to observe occultations. The combination of HIPO and SOFIA will provide very high-quality data on a much more frequent basis than is possible using ground-based telescopes alone.


"This is a very complex process, and we just don't know what is causing these effects" on Pluto's surface, Elliot said. "That's why you need to send a mission."

[Bong30]

Pluto has global warming?

just like earth?

[divestoned]

global warming is a "real and scientific fact" please take heed and cut down on your fossil fuel usage......(im no tree hugger ..i dont like my government,and I dont believe in god)..but global warming may kill or corrupt our grandchildren. take heed ..it's an urgent issue!

dive:stoned:

[birdgirl73]

I know it's a real fact, too. That's been clear for some time from scientists. And certainly that's true that the sun is doing the warming, Bong, but it's our fossil fuel emissions, CFCs and other crap that's depleting the ozone layer in our stratosphere and helping the planet be more susceptible to that solar heating.
Global Warming and Ozone Depletion (http://www.ess-home.com/news/global-warming/ozone-depletion.asp)

I read an interesting thing a couple of months ago about other contributors to global warming/climate change. Cattle are a huge contributor to the problem! They release tons of poop and gas, sending significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. They're worse than transportation and factory emissions, particularly in India and Brazil, which are the cattle-heaviest countries. Not sure what the solution is. Maybe Beano for cattle? Or maybe we'll all need to become vegetarians while we're undergoing other "green" changes.
Cattle produce more global warming gases than cars (http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1130-un.html)

[Bong30]

I know it's a real fact, too.

The Fact is the earth is allways in Climate Change.....

The only fact is that Libs want to stifle the debate.......


That's been clear for some time from scientists. And certainly that's true that the sun is doing the warming, Bong, but it's our fossil fuel emissions, CFCs and other crap that's depleting the ozone layer in our stratosphere and helping the planet be more susceptible to that solar heating.
Global Warming and Ozone Depletion (http://www.ess-home.com/news/global-warming/ozone-depletion.asp)


I understand the Humans contribute to the effect.....

But are we the main Cause? <<<<< still debatable to every one But libs....

I read an interesting thing a couple of months ago about other contributors to global warming/climate change. Cattle are a huge contributor to the problem! They release tons of poop and gas, sending significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. They're worse than transportation and factory emissions, particularly in India and Brazil, which are the cattle-heaviest countries. Not sure what the solution is. Maybe Beano for cattle? Or maybe we'll all need to become vegetarians while we're undergoing other "green" changes.
Cattle produce more global warming gases than cars (http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1130-un.html)


BG...come on in you first paragraph you say it isnt debateable.....

then you say Cows cause it............ Come on BG just say there is Global warming....it might be happening right now if were wernt here, but we are here and it is happening. Humans are part of the problem, but what part of the problem?

what about Pluto going through global warming with no evil conservative on the planet?

[delusionsofNORMALity]

global warming is a "real and scientific fact"....

whether temperatures rise or fall is not the question, the earth's climate is always changing. the causes and effects are the debatable issues, even though neither side seems to welcome that debate. the entire issue has become so clouded by economic and political forces that it is now more of a war between ideologies than a true scientific examination of the facts.

[greenman:D]

I would say it is cars, trucks , coal power plants, and so on, the ozone layer filters out the suns harmfull UV rays,and the ozone layer is breaking down from all the emitions , this is why there is so much more UV rays and people are getting skin cancer from it.
On the subject cows are the cause, i very much doubt it, there has always been wild cattle/horses even dinosaurs and so on living on this planet.
scientistscan created Ozone and fill a chamer with its gasses, they have also added car emittions to this chamer and mesured the brake down the ozones on a huge scale so yes they have proved it.

[medicinal]

YUP, just as I thought, we're responsible, at least in part. there might be a cyclical thing going on, but we're pushing it over the edge. The combination of all factors spells disaster. It's time to start the greening process. First, we need an all out thermonuclear war to thin the herd, this would eliminate 2/3 of the problem (Humans), then the earth could go through a regeneration period and the space aliens could come by in a few thousand years and re-seed the population and we could start over. Hopefully this new species wouldn't be the warmongering breed that now inhabits the planet. Or we could try and get a handle on the situation we have now. Basically, it's up to us.

[latewood]

Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that
Pluto's global warming was "likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun's output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto."


Did you read your own copy/paste article? Is your real name George W???

[latewood]

So that makes your point "moot"

[Fencewalker]

Anybody that says the cause of "global warming" (or to be accurate "climate change") has been established without a doubt in my opinion is showing their ignorance.

Aliens Cause Global Warming"

A lecture by Michael Crichton
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
January 17, 2003

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.

I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be a very good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.


But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

But let's look at how it came to pass.

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it ARE WE ALONE? ( Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence either way.

Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day.

But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.

And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of course extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.

Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter.

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage.

Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.

The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate.

At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:

Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe… etc

(The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance…and so on.)

The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on.

And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic.

According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.

But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.

This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.

The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of the effect of nuclear winter.

I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was.

At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…"

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therap6y…the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But back to our main subject.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views.

At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."

Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant.

I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.

That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended.

What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring.

A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened.

What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke.

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard?

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.
Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the 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.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.

I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure.

But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate."

What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area.

The answer to all these questions is no. We don't.

In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.

And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose one.

Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this.

I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what.

Well, I'll tell you.

In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.

The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?

Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.

Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

Thank you very much.

[Fencewalker]

And Al Gore...The Green Warrior!

Correction: In this column that appeared Aug. 10 on the Forum Page, writer Peter Schweizer inaccurately stated that former vice president Al Gore receives royalties from a zinc mine on his property in Tennessee despite his environmental advocacy. He no longer does, as the mine was closed in 2003.

Al Gore has spoken: The world must embrace a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To do otherwise, he says, will result in a cataclysmic catastrophe. "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb," warns the website for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin."

Graciously, Gore tells consumers how to change their lives to curb their carbon-gobbling ways: Switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, use a clothesline, drive a hybrid, use renewable energy, dramatically cut back on consumption. Better still, responsible global citizens can follow Gore's example, because, as he readily points out in his speeches, he lives a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." But if Al Gore is the world's role model for ecology, the planet is doomed.

For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Gore is not alone. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has said, "Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence." The DNC website applauds the fact that Gore has "tried to move people to act." Yet, astoundingly, Gore's persuasive powers have failed to convince his own party: The DNC has not signed up to pay an additional two pennies a kilowatt hour to go green. For that matter, neither has the Republican National Committee.

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

Living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either.

Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore receives $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operates a zinc concession on his property. Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork River.

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.
Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe - USATODAY.com (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm)

Environmental Trendiness (and Hypocrisy)
In the past, Al Gore has made his environmental positions a big part of his message, notably in his book "Earth in the Balance", which sold well. We don't critique candidates' policy positions, but some of that may come back to haunt him by making him look extreme, trendy or hypocritical.

Gore runs the risk of being shown up as a hypocrite, the way Mike Dukakis was in 1998 after Boston Harbor's pollution problem was exposed.

One example is the Pigeon River in North Carolina and east Tennesee. The Champion International paper mill has pumped tons of chemicals and byproducts into it for years, turning it the color of cofee and adding a sulfurish smell. Gore campaigned hard against this pollution and lobbied the EPA to crack down. But in 1987, as Gore started running for president the first time, he was pressured by 2 politicians whose support he craved for the North Carolina Super Tuesday primary. Terry Sanford (then a Senator) and Jamie Clarke (North Carolina congressmen) lobbied him hard to ease up on Champion. Gore did, writing to the EPA again and now asking for a more permissive water pollution standard. Sanford and Clarke endorsed him, and Gore won the state handily.

Another example is a Gore family property that has been mined for zinc and germanium for decades. The Vice-President and his dad, the late Senator Albert Gore, Sr., obtained the land in a very favorable deal with the late Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum. Gore, Sr. was heavily supported by Hammer financially, and carried his water in the U.S. Senate.

Back in 1972, when zinc was discovered across the river from the Gore family land in Carthage, TN, Hammer sent engineers out and offered $20,000 per year for a mineral rights lease on some property owned by a church that had been willed the land. Instead, they wanted to sell and Hammer won a bidding war to buy the land for $160,000. He then sold it to Gore Jr. and Sr. for the same amount, and immediately started leasing the land back from him for the same $20,000. Lynwood Burkhalter, who in the 70s was president of the company that assumed this lease from Occidental Petroleum, called the payments "extraordinarily large."

Mining is, of course, a very messy business environmentally. The mine itself hasn't been that bad. Republicans have claimed that it's polluting the local drinking water, but according to the Wall Street Journal those problems "are actually very minor." However, the Journal notes that the plant in Clarksville TN, which processes the Gore minerals, is a federal Superfund site contaminated with cadmium and mercury, posing "a threat to the human food chain."


There's also a damning quote about cutting down Yew trees to make a promising cancer treatment that we used to include in our Gore quotes section. Except that the really embarrassing part -- which we got from an editorial in the Austin, Texas American Statesman -- turns out to be distorted and out of context. The full quote, which is still a little odd, is:

"The Pacific Yew can be cut down and processed to produce a potent chemical, taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die. It seems an easy choice -- sacrifice the tree for a human life -- until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated, that only specimens more than a hundred years old contain the potent chemical in their bark, and that there are very few of these yews remaining on earth." - Gore, in "Earth in the Balance", p. 119

The distorted version puts a period after "for each patient treated," as if the ratio of trees to humans was what bothered Gore. In reality, his point is that treating all current cancer patients would destroy all of the trees, leaving none of the drug for future cancer patients.
Skeleton Closet - Al Gore, The Dark Side (http://www.realchange.org/gore.htm#pollution)

[latewood]

rhetoric, and more misdirection...
The whole world must be ignorant, because all other major countries besides the Petro-chemically led U.S. and China want to change. The only reason China doesn't join the rest of the world in their beliefs on "Global Warming" is because the American leadership turns a blind eye.

[Bong30]

Latewood you are funny.

The USA doesnt want to change cause we are evil...The Evil of the the whole world HUH? You hate the USA and it shows.

The point was...There is Many factors in Global warming. Just showing a Planet, that has no humans. Goes to show that climates do change. With our with out us.

I do believe we need a Gas Minimum Price.

If gas was not allowed to go below 4 bucks a gallon..... we would be finding a new way to feul of cars.....

China Needs to cut emmisions, USA needs to cut emmisions, europe need to cut emmisions......EVEN IF THERE WASNT GLOBAL WARMING.

Now lets debate the Data "not Facts" and make sense of this.

[Zimzum]

Pluto? Wasn't that just removed from the official list of planets? Why not use the moon as an example? 200+ in the sun, 200- in the shade.

Humans have been defying nature since we stepped foot on this planet. Science has given us longer life spans and a few extra choices on how we want to end our existence.

Global Population Count
0 AD - 200,000,000 ~
1900 - 1,656,000,000
2000 - 6,085,572,000
2050 - 9,075,903,000 - projected population

Population growth of about 1.5 Billion people in our first 1900 calender years. But the last 100 or so years we have gained 4.4 billion people. And gaining another 3 billion by 2050.

To anyone who is a hunter you know why we hunt deer. Not only for food, but when there numbers get out of control things go bad. Not only have we as humans grown in population we are also living 2-3 times longer. Natures own way of cleaning up the environment is running on over drive and someday in the future expect that motor to just burn itself out.

[Bong30]

OK Zim you are onto somethin.....

when we are gone we are gone... nothing we can do

Mother earth want us gone....poooof like the bowl im about to smoke GONE



so why make it political....let science figure it out, and lets all cut emmisions. HUH?

[latewood]

yeah Zim...good post.

bonger... I don't know why you think I hate the USA. I just hate the fact that policy makers are bought and paid for. The public vote is ignored, etc...etc...but this is getting off-topic.

[Zimzum]

so why make it political....

Why not make it political? Why do AIDS victims take all those medications when they know there just extending there death? Why do people continue to pray to god when in the last 2000 years no profits have come forth. Back in the day of the Bible there were tons of them walking around talking to god.

So why make it political? Some of us like to use caution instead of just thinking "fuck it".

[Bong30]

I live for off topic

[Bong30]

Why not make it political? Why do AIDS victims take all those medications when they know there just extending there death? Why do people continue to pray to god when in the last 2000 years no profits have come forth. Back in the day of the Bible there were tons of them walking around talking to god.

So why make it political? Some of us like to use caution instead of just thinking "fuck it".

Earth to Zim Earth to Zim

you are having selective reading again

I say we all need to cut emmisions even if there was no global warming....

how do you get "FUCK it"...out of that?


I say fuck it to libs that want to STIFLE the debate, not about cutting emmisions.

See ZiM I have Bad asthma...On Red pullution days I can bearly brethe. I want pollutiuon lower like every one else....

[latewood]

Well here is something for you to chew on, then.

I believed you called me a liberal...I laugh.
If I had my way...We would be building a wall on the southern border...Just for a start.

[Bong30]

yeah Zim...good post.

bonger... I don't know why you think I hate the USA. I just hate the fact that policy makers are bought and paid for. The public vote is ignored, etc...etc...but this is getting off-topic.

Now we are getting to the bottom of it... you are still mad the Bush won the Electoral college VOTE.

See Latewood there are these things called checks and Balances in Our goverment... With the Electoral college, and the Supreme court, you could lose the popular vote and win the Election.....

here is the difference.....Libs Lost...VOTER FRAUD...THE SYTEM DOESNT WORK...BLAH BLAH...you still are not over it...LOL

But when the Libs won in 06 the GOP took stock didnt call voter fraud, cause like before there was none.... HUmmmmmm


Just understand that Bush will be gone and we will have a chance to vote a real american into office.

Its not clinton, or Edwards or Gore or Obama......sorry



Shit late wood ill meet you there.... we need to unite....Bush will be gone, so the Libs that are still Mad need to get over it and lets pull together...Debate all points, and Talk about all enemys foreign and domestic.....

[birdgirl73]

BG...come on in you first paragraph you say it isnt debateable.....

then you say Cows cause it............ Come on BG just say there is Global warming....it might be happening right now if were wernt here, but we are here and it is happening. Humans are part of the problem, but what part of the problem?

what about Pluto going through global warming with no evil conservative on the planet?
You questions here don't really make sense to me, Bong. Global warming (or whatever anyone wants to call it) isn't in question factually or scientifically. Nor is the fact that cattle emissions contribute to the problem. The two aren't mutually exclusive, just as the fact that other planets in the solar system go through warming trends, too, doesn't exclude the fact that humans, animals, and industrial emissions are aggravating the problem here on earth.

The other strangely nonsensical thing was your postulation that libs want to stifle the debate about emissions/pollution. Libs are the ones who started that debate, my friend. They're the ones who care about it today and are also the ones who cared about it 35 and 40 years ago when they were seen as "tree-hugging" crazies. They're the ones who're far more likely to effect environmental change and raise awareness. Your fossil-fuel-connected, big-oil Republicans are the ones with their heads in the sand on that topic, the ones who don't believe emissions are even a problem affecting our climate, much less a problem that needs fixing.

[delusionsofNORMALity]

you folks amuse the shit out of me. bong with his hatred of all things liberal and so many of you others who seem to despise the conservatives with equal zeal, are any of you really paying attention? the above lecture by chichton is an accurate portrayal of the sorry state of the modern scientific community and yet it doesn't seem to bother any of you that the facts you are basing all of your arguments on are hopelessly tangled in webs of politics and deception (pardon my redundancy). you seem to have convinced yourselves that just because the leaders of your particular ideological niche declare that a consensus has been reached that it must be true.

yeah, i'm an old hippie and over the last thirty some odd years i've donated more than my fair share of time and money to the very causes many of you libs claim to espouse, but just lately i've cut a lot of that shit out. i realized that the counter culture, whose ideals i had spent so much of my life fighting for, and big business/politics, who i had dedicated my life to opposing, were both telling me the same lies. that line between us and them had at first blurred and then completely disappeared. the left is now running the same game on us that those old reactionary bastards used to and nobody seems to notice or care.

i know that the concept of man made global warming fits in quite nicely with all of our old stands against pollution and over development and i know that it is easier to fight against an unjust system than to see the truths they have mixed in with their lies. i would love to believe that the leaders of the left are still fighting for the working man and a just cause, but the socialist agenda they have developed is no friendlier to the common folk than the greedy tyrants of the right. the real inconvenient truth is that this new wave of environmental activists is nothing more than a bunch of attention whores, basking in the glory and power to be gained by twisting the truth to fit their needs. the worst inconvenient truth is that the revolution is over, the battles have all been lost and the martyrs died in vain.

[Fencewalker]

Delusions, if I could give ya rep, I would. ;)

The process has become so politicized that we cannot trust the science and the agendas of both sides preclude any actual fact (what little of it there is) from being accepted.

I'll repeat, if anybody thinks they know the cause of climate change, in my opinion, they are deluding themselves.

If we could enforce blind studies financed by a general science fund, making it so that the scientists themselves would not be beholden to their "financial masters", we could start to maybe, just maybe, trust again what the scientific community says...Until that happens, it's just propoganda being spewed by one side or the other.

[delusionsofNORMALity]

.... it's just propoganda being spewed by one side or the other.

with all us sheep in the middle being driven from one side of the pen to the other.:hippy: fuck 'em all, i'm gonna get high.

[robert42]

anyone read that information by a ex Canadian minster sayin the link to stopping global warming is UFO's...

[greenman:D]

Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that
Pluto's global warming was "likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun's output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto."


Did you read your own copy/paste article? Is your real name George W???
The sun if anything is in its burn out phase, so if anything the sun is getting colder not that we will notice in our life time,the only reason the planet is getting hotter is because the ozone layer, think of the ozone layer being the top of ur clone chamber and the moisture inside it being the rain, now, the top of ur clone chamer is slowly melting away and this is casueing the moisture to evaperate through the holes and greenhouse effect to loose moisture and disrupting the enviroment inside.this is why in there is erradical weather all over the planet.
Denying that we are the cause of the problem is just denial to the fact that we are destroying the planet, its a fact think about it, all the cars in the world pumping out carbons,all the coal power plants,all the factorys spewing out raw pollution, over poplulation,surage discharge from houses.
Ozone levels, over the northern hemisphere, have been dropping by 4% per decade. Over approximately 5% of the Earth's surface, around the north and south poles, much larger

[latewood]

Now we are getting to the bottom of it... you are still mad the Bush won the Electoral college VOTE.

See Latewood there are these things called checks and Balances in Our goverment... With the Electoral college, and the Supreme court, you could lose the popular vote and win the Election.....

here is the difference.....Libs Lost...VOTER FRAUD...THE SYTEM DOESNT WORK...BLAH BLAH...you still are not over it...LOL

But when the Libs won in 06 the GOP took stock didnt call voter fraud, cause like before there was none.... HUmmmmmm


Just understand that Bush will be gone and we will have a chance to vote a real american into office.

Its not clinton, or Edwards or Gore or Obama......sorry



Shit late wood ill meet you there.... we need to unite....Bush will be gone, so the Libs that are still Mad need to get over it and lets pull together...Debate all points, and Talk about all enemys foreign and domestic..... Someone mentioned the science being corrupted...Yes it is, because the government and industry has the $$$ they either payoff climtology experts or discredit "same" with inuendo and false accusations. This is the basis of my evolving beliefs. The members of the science community that were stifled in years past are now becoming willing to discuss there findings. Remember that most of these true genius' are coerced by confidentiality agreements and would have to sacrifice their careers in order to speak out. Somehow that point always get's missed when asking; why hasn't anyone talked about this before. Well there is the "other" reason. It wasn't profitable!:cool:

bong...You don't know much about me. I have backed republican's almost my entire adult life. from Nixon right past Reagan. So you are way off base reading me. :smokin:

It is never going to be anyone from one of the parties. If we find a human being to staff the whitehouse, That person will be independent. hillary's a crook...whether "they" got away with it or not ;) (wish I had someone to go to jail for me!)...Edwards...too close too home, but his state did de-criminalize pot,:thumbsup: and I think you can grow hemp in NC too. Is Gore running? you see I don't really care about that??? I feel bad for Obama, just because it rhymes with Osama...Not a chance. I can't believe he is running...Of course there is always the notion; "As long as they are talking about you"...

You want to get behind a cause. Get behind "hemp" Hemp easily could be the foundation of turning the emmission's and economical problems...as well as bringing the boys/girls home. :thumbsup:
And before anyone says the wrong thing top me about the War. I lost a great and dear friend at Nasaryia the 3rd day of this Occupation.

Hemp! I am going to start a conspiracy thread in order to bring to light the real truth's behind the criminalization of hemp...renamed marijuana for the vote in the legislature. No-one knew what it was...and why American's should be pushing legislation to allow farmers to grow hemp.
It could be the next boom. People of all walks of life go to the country and buy the dilapidated abandoned farms...let down by who???You guessed it. the gov screwed the farmers too...Republican agendas...Sorry :cool:

here is the conspiracy. The government cronies, bought and paid for by randolph hearst, and fueled by the prohibiton era...the courts; (allowed for preselected jurors and railroaded defendant after defendant)Hearst interest in shutting down the most versatile fabric in the world..."paper and pulp." He's known for his newspaper empire, but where do you think he and everyone else got their paper. God forbid we use hemp to make paper...stronger than pulp, We could stop raping the rainforests, and national land. For clothing...6x's as strong as cotton...oooops

Better wait and start my thread. later.

Bong, I am glad you clarified that you realize there is a problem.

[latewood]

yeah robert...He was making a mockery of the way scientific info is squewed
by big bucks, and confidentiality agreements. Articles like that just hurt the efforts made by people that are taking a more serious stand on these issues.

Of course serious people are boring. So be it.

[Fencewalker]

The Great Global Warming Swindle (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=global%2Bwarming%2Bswindle)

For those that say "well, what does it hurt to take precautionary measures, even if man made global warming isn't true", pay special attention to the last 15 minutes of the video.

[harris7]

This thread is filled with such enlightened people who all possess information the rest of humanity lacks.

Few people on here have even the slightest grip on the science yet will defend their point endlessly.


If we could enforce blind studies financed by a general science fund, making it so that the scientists themselves would not be beholden to their "financial masters", we could start to maybe, just maybe, trust again what the scientific community says....


I believe you use this as a cop out. When ever science says something that you donâ??t agree with, Bing. Play this card.
Well I hope that works out for you.
You know you can track the funding of any study. Have you done this, or do you just assume?

[Fencewalker]

I believe you use this as a cop out. When ever science says something that you donâ??t agree with, Bing. Play this card.
Wow. You know me so well to make that statement. :wtf:

Nothing like making an uninformed generalization about somebody based on your own bias. Hope that keeps working out for you. :p

Few people on here have even the slightest grip on the science yet will defend their point endlessly
Yes, but there are some true scientists that will keep on harping on the man made global warming propogandists until they realize it. ;)

[Big boi]

i love this dude

[dutch.lover]

i love how people post news stories on this forum, and try to pass them off as fact.

does anyone know how badly the media is biased... anyone?!?!?!

i think it would be best for people to do REAL research, instead of posting a headline like "Global Warming isn't Caused by Human Activities" and then going "see! see! I was right!!!"

[Fencewalker]

I love how some people act like the "media" is an entity all of it's own and not made up of individual people. Sort of like "The Government" (que ominous music). For instance, the video linked has scientists (former head of NASA's meterological dept, one of the authors and contributors of the IPCC report as examples) among other people voicing their opinion. But since it was distributed via the media, we should ignore it?
Btw, how should people do their research if they don't avail themselves of the job the media does in informing? The internet is another form of "the media", what with online papers, radio stations, tv stations and blogs.

Just can't trust anybody, can we?

Generalized dismissal of an entire profession based on a cookie cutter stereotype may seemingly make life easier, but does a disservice to the actual individuals that make up said profession and makes the pursuit of knowledge and the truth a bit...Problematic.

The same with "if somebody disagrees with me, they are..." liberals, neo-conservatives, etc. etc.

Much easier to dismiss the debate (argue the messenger, not the message mindset) instead of actually debating the points.

Btw, I completely agree everybody should research and try to gain knowledge on every subject they are interested in, from as many different, independent sources they can find. Where did I learn that? Broadcast Journalism school. :)

[Gatekeeper777]

Made by nature, well yes your right to a certian extent, but the rate of global warming has increased dramatically since the onset of industrialization.
Mankind is pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and that helps nature with global warming. altho most scientist in the world NOW know that global warming is real some still say its all bullshit.
But then again you could smash a turd and roll it in nuts and bake it and tell people its a turd rolled in nuts they will argue that its really a brownie.
I say go ahead and take a huge bite!
my contrabution to blobal warming is when i toke on my bowl i release a lil CO2.

[dutch.lover]

Yeah I guess I came off as kind of harsh. The media shouldn't be totally passed up I suppose, as that's how we all at least initially learn about an issue. When I hear about something about drugs, or the environment or something of interest, I usually go look into it farther. I hit up the internet, try to find academic studies if I can, and draw my own conclusions. I rarely take something at face value, but I think a lot of people do (and that's what the problem is). That's why it bothers me when someone cites ONE source, and tries to make is sound like it's legit or 100% correct or convincing.

There are a lot of scientists out there who aren't real scientists at all...For example (im using this cause it's something close to all of our hearts) the DEA's info about marijuana. They have a whole PDF file on their website about negative cannabis 'facts'. Read it for yourself, and as I'm sure you already know, they aren't "facts" at all. They are statements made by paid-off "scientists". I did a lot of digging into this because I wrote a paper on Cannabis last semester...the only studies I could find that were truly anti-cannabis happened to be funded by some other anti-drug organization (i cant remember who at the moment). Do you see what I'm getting at? I guess I should have elaborated earlier...

[Gatekeeper777]

on that note i dont know of any pro cannibus sites that list any negitive effects, besides memory loss.
and ummmmmmmmmm i forget

[Psycho4Bud]

:S2: Everything can be blamed on global warming.......enjoy!
YouTube - Fox's 1/2 Hour News Hour Has Daily Show Running Scared (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5CL8SbPRVc)

Have a good one!:jointsmile:

[harris7]

I love how some people act like the "media" is an entity all of it's own and not made up of individual people. Sort of like "The Government" (que ominous music). For instance, the video linked has scientists (former head of NASA's meterological dept, one of the authors and contributors of the IPCC report as examples) among other people voicing their opinion. But since it was distributed via the media, we should ignore it?
Btw, how should people do their research if they don't avail themselves of the job the media does in informing? The internet is another form of "the media", what with online papers, radio stations, tv stations and blogs.

Just can't trust anybody, can we?

Generalized dismissal of an entire profession based on a cookie cutter stereotype may seemingly make life easier, but does a disservice to the actual individuals that make up said profession and makes the pursuit of knowledge and the truth a bit...Problematic.

:)



The Media is by definition the sum of all information mediums
So yes, the Media is an over generalization.
I would assume the intension was â??main stream mediaâ?� or popular source media

Personally I donâ??t trust the media much at all. They constantly lie and mislead, on purpose or not (using old disproved research).

I source my information always from the source, usually scholarly journals to which I have a full subscription and access to all.

If you have taken media studies I would hope youâ??ve done a project comparing the scientific reporting of a study and the popular source reporting of the study.

I have and itâ??s troubling. The Mediaâ??s job isnâ??t to inform it is to make people read/watch/listen to them so they can get advertising dollars.

So they tell you what you want to hear not the truth (necessarily):
People like: concrete results, single causation, simile logical reasoning things that are of rare occurrences in the world.


I read the newspaper every day, not to inform myself but to see how the public is being informed.