Global Warming

[Borodog]

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It is very much in the personal interest of scientists fighting for scarce grant funding (and grant funding is always scarce, no matter the level) to attempt to maximize the perceived importance and impact of what they are researching. A great way to do this is to make dire predictions.

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There may be some element of that, but there is also the peer review process and the whole of the sceientific method to put a damper on it. Which is more closely monitored and held accountable -- the work done by scientists through grant funding, published in established, peer reviewed journals, or the work of industry spokespeople?

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The people doing the peer reviews are fighting for the same kind of grant money and making the same kinds of arguments. I'm not saying there's some giant conspiracy, or the people in the environmental science community are being dishonest, because they aren't. But self-interest is a powerful motivator that can distort one's perceptions. Believe me, I saw it first hand. I was a technical analyst and strategic planner for the EPA's National Environmental Supercomputing Center (NESC) and Office of Research and Development (ORD). I worked with a lot of people and one of their main goals was to constantly maximize the perceived impact of their work (i.e. spin it) to ensure funding. For example, there's a big move in EPA to pre-model atmospheric transport around major targets in the U.S., like cities. My boss and I basically sat around in an office one day brainstorming how we could raise the perceived value of supercomputing in the EPA in light of "Homeland Security", and this program is what we came up with. That doesn't make it a "bad" program, but it tells you where the motivations came from.

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What should also not be surprising is that scientists employed by governments produce results to those governments' liking, and what government likes the most is a crisis that allows those in government to justify the extension of their influence, power, and control.

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There's some logic in that, but in practice a lot of complexities probably add to the mix. The current administration has consistently dismissed human caused climate change.

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I'm not interested in the current administration. Like all administrations, the current one is filled with crooked crooks and their crooked cronies.

[FlFishOn]

Shouldn't you be catching up on Doonesbury?

[John Feeney]

Again, though, (and you may not have seen the edit I added to my prior post) the bottom line is how much stock we are to put in the statements of working climate scientists versus the statements of paid industry spokespeople. We can point to sources of bias for nearly anyone saying anything. But in which of those two groups can we expect more bias and less monitoring and accountability?

[Borodog]

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Again, though, (and you may not have seen the edit I added to my prior post) the bottom line is how much stock we are to put in the statements of working climate scientists versus the statements of paid industry spokespeople. We can point to sources of bias for nearly anyone saying anything. But in which of those two groups can we expect more bias and less monitoring and accountability?

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Frankly, it's not obvious to me that the one would be less biased than the other. It's not as if all of the research being funded privately isn't peer reviewed or isn't published in the same journals as publicly funded research, because much of it is. Pick up most scientific journals and you'll find many studies at least partially funded by corporate grants if not downright conducted by corporate employed researchers. They have to go through the same peer review process. They don't get a pass because Exxon-Mobil is paying the bill.

[wacki]

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The solution is more capitalism, i.e. allow the market to internalize the costs of pollution.

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Ugh... we've been over this a countless times before. Open up a physics book and see how well capitalism helped create chapters. Who is going to invest billions in ITER over 20 years when patents don't last long enough to build a plant. Again I am repeating myself over and over with you. The other capitalism thread we talked in explains why they will never absorb the costs.



For all those worried about economic costs. The cost of 9/11 alone would be more than enough to fund this research. Then think about how this research effects terrorism and national security. As for the cost of producing energy, solar panels are already becoming competitive with coal in the lab and their is much room for improvement. Offshore wind isn't that far away either. If ITER ever gets finished energy will be dirt cheap. All trends say this is a no brainer. It just takes time and patents don't last very long.

ugh... ok this is my last post for the day.

[John Feeney]

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It's not as if all of the research being funded privately isn't peer reviewed or isn't published in the same journals as publicly funded research, because much of it is.

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Whoa. I haven't looked in recent months, but last I did look, the climate change naysayers hadn't really done any research, almost none anyway that had been published in established, respected journals. They make pronouncements and argue against the results of those doing the research, but their research (if they do any) isn't showing up in the legitimate journals. (I wouldn't be surprised if by now they've created their own journals, but...) Of course you may be able to find an article or two from the naysayers; I heard they managed to slip one through at one point.

Again, you've got one group doing the research and publishing in known journals, and you have naysayers paid directly by corporate employers. If you can put as much stock in the latter as in the former, then science has lost pretty much all its value, hasn't it? Now really, you have a science background. Don't you think it's more than a huge stretch to argue you can weight the statements from the two sides anywhere near equally?

[Borodog]

wacki, I'm getting pretty sick of you and your "We've been over this countless times before, you're an idiot, and I don't have time for this" style of argument. We (meaning including me) have not been over this before, so either stop with the insults and produce something useful, or just shut up.

I'm sure you've had these discussions over and over and over, but they haven't been with me. All I ever see is you being an insulting insufferable jerk, and somehow you get a pass because you're a mod. When you advocate some position on the internet strongly you are going to, by definition, have to state that position, and argue it, over and over and over, because there are always new people coming along who don't have access to the materials you believe support your position. How this is not obvious is beyond me. You don't get to just bitch slap people, insult them, and tell them that you've explained it all before somewhere in your thousands of posts, so if they don't agree with you they are retarded or stupid.

Either start behaving like a civilized human being, or stop responding to my posts. I'd love to put you on ignore, but I don't have that option.

[Borodog]

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It's not as if all of the research being funded privately isn't peer reviewed or isn't published in the same journals as publicly funded research, because much of it is.

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Whoa. I haven't looked in recent months, but last I did look, the climate change naysayers hadn't really done any research, almost none anyway that had been published in established, respected journals. They make pronouncements and argue against the results of those doing the research, but their research (if they do any) isn't showing up in the legitimate journals. (I wouldn't be surprised if by now they've created their own journals, but...) Of course you may be able to find an article or two from the naysayers; I heard they managed to slip one through at one point.

Again, you've got one group doing the research and publishing in known journals, and you have naysayers paid directly by corporate employers. If you can put as much stock in the latter as in the former, then science has lost pretty much all its value, hasn't it? Now really, you have a science background. Don't you think it's more than a huge stretch to argue you can weight the statements from the two sides anywhere near equally?

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When you specifically pick "climate-change naysayers" you're pretty much restricting yourself to hacks, since I think the evidence is incontrovertible and insurmountable (as I said). That's like picking "evolution naysayers".

My point is that corporate funded research per se is not inherently less trustworthy that publicly-funded research, and the scientific literature is filled with privately funded research that is peer reviewed and published in the same journals as publicly funded research.

[bocablkr]

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The problem with the global warming debate is that the science (which I believe is incontrovertible) is used to draw the wrong conclusions. At the end of the wickipedia article there is a fairly good estimate of the cost of the impacts of global warming. But what is not there is an estimate of the cost of "doing something" to try and prevent global warming. Basically what it comes down to is this: significantly reducing greenhouse emissions can only be done by crippling the world economically. While the costs associated with global warming could be trillions of US dollars, the costs associated with the various Kyoto-style plans to reduce greenhouse emissions are in the hundreds of trillions, with no guarantee that they would work.

The number one killer of human beings is not heat, or cold, or tornados, or hurricanes, or droughts, or any other climate-related disaster. It is poverty. And the only cure for poverty is increased productivity that can raise standards of living. The cost of coercively shackling world productivity to reduce emissions will be a drastic increase in world poverty, and poverty brings starvation, disease, misery, and death on unimagineable scales.

Human beings live in every environment on Earth, from the blistering cold to the blistering heat. Some places will get worse, and some places will actually get better. People will have to move. But they will have decades over which to do it. There's already enough poverty in the world. Don't advocate policies that will multiply it ten or a hundred fold.

My $0.02 on global warming.

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Boro,

Once again, you are wrong on many points. Number one, even if it did cost trillions that doesn't cripple the economy it strengthens it. Where do you think the money goes? Into a black hole? It goes into the economy in terms of expenditures on new equipment and technologies. It creates jobs. It is a trillion dollar shot in the arm.

You are just parroting the standard response when it comes to environmental regulations and it effects on industry. It has been shown that environmental regulations actually create jobs instead of losing them. The other health and environmental benefits are just a plus. They said the clean air and water act would destroy some industries - didn't happen. The recovery of the Great Lakes region has added hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars into the economies of the Great Lake states.

Down in Tampa the local power company (Tampa Electric) spent almost a billion dollars converting their plant to more efficient natural gas instead of fighting the environmentalists. A billion dollars. Did it hurt them??? Nope. They recovered it in 3 years because they were so much more efficient. The CEO, a republican could not believe it. They are more profitable now than ever before. The area residents no longer complain of breathing and sinus problems. And they ended up added almost a billion into the economy.

You are also partly wrong about this - "the only cure for poverty is increased productivity that can raise standards of living." This is true to a point but there are not enough resources in the world to support every human at the same standard of living as say the United States. We would end of completely depleting the world's natural recourses and then there would be a disastrous decline in everyone's standard of living.

Your 2 cents aren't worth a penny.

[wacki]

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We (meaning including me) have not been over this before, so either stop with the insults and produce something useful,

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When I mentioned the $1/gallon tax I did mix you up with natedogg. I apologize for that. But we have been over capitalism and research/pollution concepts before. I am willing to bet you any amount of money I can prove it.

If you want to bet $10,000 or more I'd be more than happy to.