Global cooling back again?

This reminds me of another debate going on, ID versus evolution.

"O there's no complete explanation for how the eyeball evolved so it must've been created, thus debunking a mountain of research in evolutions favor because it can't fully explain every step of the eye-creation process"

translates into

"O there's no complete explanation for why the earth would cool this year so it must be nothing to worry about, thus debunking a mountain of research in global warming's favor because it can't fully explain every step of this year's cooling."

Not to say global warming is as established a theory as evolution, but I find the similarities amusing.

Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell - New York Times

Quote:

If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.

Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.

“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.

“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

Psh -- the temperature of Earth has barely risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last 100 years.

Apparently you have no idea how short of a time 100 years is.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Radez29

Which in turn means you can talk about the overwhelming majority all you want, and I can talk about social pressure, marketing, government funding and its effect on careers all I want, either of us could spin "science" to completely support either view point.

The real difference is that you're choosing to believe in a conspiracy. The thing I dislike about conspiracies is that it's easy to say one is happening without providing an inkling of evidence, other than "ppl are evil yo." You might as well jump on the "vaccinations cause autism" bandwagon since they use the same theories you do (and are just as outweighed on the evidence as your stance is).

And well, we could just end the whole debate by saying that the dramatic increase in gases ruins air quality and water quality for humans, so it's in our best interest anyway, but someone would probably try to argue that too.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Gechmir, I'm not going to debate you on the science because I'm not that knowledgeable about it. What I do know is that far more scientists, scientific associations, and scientific studies support global warming than disapprove it. For every article you post claiming there is no warming, I can post 5 that say there is. The facts aren't the point in a debate like this, because this is exactly like the debate I had with people who claim vaccination causes autism. No matter how many studies one points out to them proving no link, all they need to do is cry 'cover up' or 'paid off' and point to their 3-4 studies that support their theory. The main issue of a debate like this is whether or not a conspiracy is likely happening.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

You may tout a "consensus" in a post or two (which does not exist in the first place. It's just a convenient false-justification to shut people up), but let me tell you first-hand that scientists do not believe in consensus. If they did, we'd still be healing people with leeches and thinking that all the planets revolve around the Earth.

So now, as well as there being no evidence for global warming, there's also no general global consensus as is claimed by worldwide news sources. This is your second conspiracy, then?

And I knew this whole "healing people with leeches" thing would come up, even though it's completely ridiculous to make that association considering the giant advances in science and scientific method/research in the past 100 years. Don't resort to cheap tricks.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

If nuclear power hadn't been canned, I can't begin to imagine how far along our technology in the field would be by now.

Nuclear power was canned because of public fear. Not because of the scientific community lying to us about facts and theories. Your comparison fails.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Blah blah DTTs blah

Your claim concerning DDTs is a more relevant comparison but it still doesn't work. You say DDTs don't cause egg shell thinning, and you are correct. DDE does(a DDT metabolite), and specifically for raptors. --A nice summary-- The case you sited about the mice, as well as a case from Japan, were debunked by the scientific community themselves, so how exactly is this proving that the scientific community can't be trusted? Scientists aren't responsible for all the environmental activists continuing to claim that DDT thins the shells of all birds, so if you want to blame somebody for getting DDT banned, blame activists that exaggerate claims of science or for politicians rushing to make policy that killed millions when there was little scientific support. And anyway, stopping greenhouse gasses isn't exactly equivalent to letting millions of people die of malaria, in case you thought this was an rational comparison.

So both of your examples prove nothing about the scientific community other than that, occasionally, studies can claim a correlation exists where none does (specifically in instances where no decent body of evidence is already established), and that these inaccurate correlations are then rebuked by the scientific community itself when repeated trials can't replicate the same results or a flaw was found with the trial. How exactly is this conducive to your argument of conspiracy?

Next up, we have your "scientists are greedy/being pressured by progreen energy" conspiracy. It's interesting that you think the pressure and greed stemming from green energy could somehow outweigh the pressure and greed stemming from oil companies at the moment. You think environmental journalism and green energy products are worth two shits compared to the significance of the oil industry? It's not like green energy companies have coffers filled with billions and billions of dollars and political push like the already established oil companies. Sure, one day, maybe the green industry will rank up with the likes of oil, but right now it's definitely not, so who the hell is spending the money to bribe all these scientists?

By all accounts, if there really was a conspiracy concerning the pressuring of scientists, we would all think global warming is all a lie because the oil companies would've paid the higher dollar for the studies and produced copious amounts of them to inundate the scientific community. I mean for gods sake, the administration of the President edited out the "harsher" sections of government reports on pollution and the environment so it sound like everything was hunky dorrie. Do you really think the idea of a conspiracy against oil companies, which is basically what this is, makes any sense considering the track record of deception so far?

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Originally Posted by packrat

Oh, and little online twats who like to argue that they don't have to understand facts relevant to the point they're making because a lot of other people with degrees also believe it. But they're really not in the circle-jerk. They're peeking in through the window, fapping to the mental image that they're there, getting their hard shaft stroked by the supple hands of Al Gore.

Aw packrat, so sublimely calling me a little online twat. Keep thinking you're in a secret club of skepticism and knowledge if that's what gets you hard.

Originally Posted by packrat

I hear your style of argument in some of the most fucking retarded Christian circles actually. These people don't really understand the facts(or lack thereof) behind their faith, but they sit there and devote themselves to it, because after all, look at those other famous people.

The fact that you're comparing a scientific debate to a religious debate tells me that you really have no fucking clue how to make logical associations. You fail.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

You said yourself that you don't know the science behind this, but I do.

I know what scientists claim and why they draw certain conclusions, just as you do. You can claim all the shit you want, but all you're going to do is lead me to scientific studies and theories that were conducted/written by somebody else to prove your side. There's no point in us arguing the facts because all we're going to do is cite somebody else's work, unless you've recently created your own models on temperature changes and sea changes throughout the globe with your own equipment?

For example, I can easily understand and post this article:

Antarctica melting super fast omg!

Does that prove to you that it's true? Probably not, because I'm sure you have studies that say it isn't. And then I can show more studies that say your studies are wrong. Etc, etc, etc. This will only become a citation showdown, and I'll end up winning since more scientists believe in global warming.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

I've researched this topic and talked with a number of specialists in the field. The professors at my alma mater (Texas A&M) support man-made global warming, but after speaking candidly with one of the folks who made the decision, he ADMITTED to doing this so he could get more funding. He told me that if a professor popped up and said "there is warming going on and I want to research it," they will get several grants provided they can show they know their elbow from their asshole.

Of course a professor has to show an interest in the subject he's researching in order to get a grant for it for Christ's sake. And your story leaves a lot of the facts to be desired. Did the professor just tell the man "I want to prove global warming happens regardless of the evidence so give me money" or did he say "I want to research the possibilities of the impact of global warming so give me money" or what, exactly? You're somehow implying a correlation exists between showing interest in researching global warming and sabotaging data to show certain results, which is a whole lot of bullshit without evidence. Also, your personal story about losing grants to global warming is irrelevant. Give me statistics about the percent of grants given to global warming compared to percent of grants given to other scientific pursuits if you want to say global warming has some magical, massive money appeal that converts scientists into liars and deceivers of the world.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Read some god damn scientific journals, you clod.

First of all, scientific journals don't have articles dedicated to whether or not there's a majority consensus on global warming. The media associated with science, and occasionally scientists themselves, comment on that. And so far, of all the media and scientists I've heard/read on the specific subject of consensus say that it is indeed happening.

Though, one of your theories must be that scientific journals are evenly divided on the issue of global warming. Well then, do you read all the scientific journals? Do you keep a running tally of how many articles vote for the one theory and how many vote for the other? You really should, since it seems that whenever I glance over the articles the majority of them are in global warmings favor. Do you keep track of which scientists have which motives for their data? All their personal histories, associations with corporate companies, possible evidence of corruption? Because if you know as much as you claim you do, you really should write a book illuminating the whole world on this giant conspiracy instead of putzing around in GFF. Also, be sure to include your detailed theory on why, how, and by who the IPCC is paid off and how all their evidence is skewered and how this has avoided the backlash of the scientific community and news media so far.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

The problem here is that science didn't man up, step forward, and allowed this craziness to run rampant.

Yes, because we all know what giant sway the opinion of scientists hold over the mainstream media.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Sounds very unbiased as a news source, buddy.


blahblahblah,DTTs are coolblahblahblah

The article I posted was a quick summary of the different studies done on DDTs. I didn't say it should be cited in a research paper. However, the article did cite it's own sources, one of which is a much lengthier consolidation of many studies on DTTs, but I guess you didn't pay attention to that:

DDT and its derivatives: environmental aspects (EHC 83, 1989)

It says things like:

"Porter & Wiemeyer (1972) fed American kestrels on a diet containing p,p' -DDE at a concentration of 2.8 mg/kg. Two birds died after 14 and 16 months of treatment; they showed residues of DDE in braintissues of 212 and 301 mg/kg, respectively. This compared with meanresidues of 14.9 (range: 4.47-26.6) mg/kg in 11 adult males sacrificed after 12-16 months on the diet. Van Velzen et al. (1972) investigated the lethal effect of stored DDT mobilization by brown-headed cowbirds. Cowbirds were fed for 13 days on a diet containing 100, 200, or 300 mg p,p' -DDT/kg, and were then given reduced rations of approximately 43% of normal daily intake for a 6-day period. Of 30 birds dosed, 21 died (6, 7, and 8 from the three dose levels, respectively). After 4 months, the remaining birds were subjected to a second period of 6 days on a reduced diet. Four more birds, out of six, died. In a second experiment, cowbirds were fed 100 mg p,p' -DDT/kg diet for 13 days and then subjected to 4 days of
reduced food intake. Seven out of 20 birds died. There were no deaths in any of the control groups (i.e., birds dosed but not starved, undosed and starved, or undosed and unstarved)."

And this:

"DDT, or more specifically its metabolite DDE, causes the shells of birds' eggs to be thinner than normal. Results on eggshell thinning are summarized in Table 7. There is considerable variation between species for this effect. Galliform species are very resistant to shell thinning whereas birds of prey are particularly susceptible."

And this:

"DDT and its metabolites can lower the reproductive rate of birds by causing eggshell thinning (which leads to egg breakage) and by causing embryo deaths. However, different groups of birds vary greatly in their sensitivity to these chemicals; predatory birds are extremely sensitive and, in the wild, often show marked shell thinning, whilst gallinaceous birds are relatively insensitive. Because of the difficulties of breeding birds of prey in captivity, most of the experimental work has been done with insensitive species, which have often shown little or no shell thinning. The few studies on more sensitive species have shown shell thinning at levels similar to those found in the wild. The lowest dietary concentration of DDT reported to cause shell thinning experimentally was 0.6 mg/kg for the black duck. The mechanism of shell thinning is not fully understood."

The article was "published under the joint sponsorship of the United Nations Environment Programme, the International Labour Organisation, and the World Health Organization" in 1989. It says that this chemical can have averse affects on shell width, newborn survival rate, survival behavior, reproduction behavior, and survival rate when not fed. It also shows various correlations between eggshell thinning of birds and the widespread introduction of DDTs in 1947, particularly in the UK. So is this yet another one of your conspiracies of science? That all these organization are just BS'ing and corrupting data, just like global warming? *sigh*

Originally Posted by Gechmir

The government is stepping in and TELLING a business what to do with its money. I don't know about you, but that's pretty damn ridiculous.

It can yell all it wants but the government has no real control over the business or it's money.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

What I'm tacking on to this debate is what I've researched and seen PERSONALLY as fact. There is a difference.

Two or three personal stories aren't enough for a thing to be true, especially considering the scope of your accusations.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

If we try to move too fast and do too much at once, things will really, REALLY get ugly.

I agree this is a reasonable concern, but global climate change theories have been around for 50+ years and only now is it taking hold of political debate and policy. That doesn't really seem like moving too fast, IMO.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Bigblah

MAJORITY OPINION

I should've been more clear. What I mean by "more scientists believe in global warming" is that because the evidence is weighing in it's favor now more scientists are prone to join that side of the argument even if they themselves didn't study the subject specifically. A majority of evidence leads to a majority of opinion, not the other way around, unless you believe in massive amounts of sabotaging experiments and data.

Originally Posted by Bigblah

What you expect of yourself:
"whenever I glance over the articles"

What you expect of others:
"be sure to include your detailed theory"
"Give me statistics about the percent of grants given to global warming compared to percent of grants given to other scientific pursuits"

You're confusing two separate arguments I'm making. I don't expect Gechmir to give me an entire detailed theory why his side of the evidence is right and mine is wrong, because I don't expect myself to do that. That's why I pointed out early in the debate that this won't be solved by who has the most scientific evidence on their side: we would just end up having a citation war.

What I do expect is for him to have a detailed theory on this conspiracy of his, because it seems to me that he had a few bad experiences with the global warming community and so is fighting a holy war against it by making grand, sweeping accusations. If he wants to claim that the majority of the scientific community is sabotaging data and experiments, then he better damn well prove it.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I don't think Gech ever denied the increased melting of Antarctica, I think he actually mentioned that it's speeding up a bit. What he did state was that it's not caused by global warming.

....

Notice how it never mentions anything about global warming/climate change? That's because these scientists (and author of the article) understand what their research was based around, and didn't try to extrapolate it to another theory it had nothing to do with.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

A group of GEOPHYSICISTS (real scientists. Not poseurs like these Environmental Studies wackos that are writing articles) looked over temperature changes in the Antarctic across the past 50 years. Despite how folks are panicking about ice melting marginally at present, this is a normal trend.

I was addressing his "ice melting marginally... normal trend" comment. I wouldn't say that melting at 20 times it's former rate is a marginal increase. It's true they didn't say it was due to global warming because they were strictly studying how fast it's melting, not why. But if this article is to lend weight to either the "earth staying cool" or "earth getting warm" argument, which side do you think it would take?

Originally Posted by Gechmir

With the oil companies posting record profits, do you think they feel any need to fund research they don't even need? Look at Shell, they're actually using it to their advantage. They've just started an ad campaign about their natural-gas based fuel which is cleaner than oil.

I don't think oil companies should fund that kind of research. The government should be doing it, not private businesses forced into doing it. My point was that if we compare the financial stability and political clout of oil companies to that of green energy companies, it's more logical to assume that oil companies are the potential bribers of science, not green energy.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I don't think it would take either side, since that's not what they're trying to study, nor do they want to make claims on. See, this is exactly where scientific studies being covered in the mainstream media starts to have problems. People want to take answers out of work that aren't actually there. Personally, I have little doubt if this was covered in an AP story on cnn.com there would be a paragraph at the end talking about how this ties into global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions.

I wouldn't try to make a connection with carbon dioxide emissions, but I would say that this kind of data corroborates much better with theories on earth warming rather than the earth cooling/staying the same temp.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

As though government agencies don't have their own biases? Right now in my field (materials science) the easiest way to get funding is to include the words "nanotechnology" and "biotechnology" in a proposal. People will stick those words on projects having to relevance to either subject, but that's just what has to be done in order to get funding. I have no doubt there's the same thing going on in climatology, geology, and all those other sub-fields that can tie their work into global warming. I mean, heck, if I want to do a killer proposal, I can write about making biocompatible piezoelectric nanowires that will harness the energy of a person's movements so they'll be less reliant upon fossil fuels and reduce their carbon footprint.

That quote from me was concerning who should fund research into green technology, so I'm not exactly sure what you're responding to. I understand how proposals can add extra wording/experimental science to get more funding. And I can see how unrelated studies in certain fields might get words like "global warming" thrown into them for the sake of funding, even though the study won't directly contribute to the theories on global warming. However, it seemed to me that Gech was saying that the studies which are focused on climate change are being distorted, and that data is being rearranged or sabotaged for the sake of greed in scientists. Or did he mean something else?

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

Personally, I don't think there's anything malicious going on on either side of the aisle here; I think it's just people seeing what they want to see in some very, very fuzzy data.

I agree there's nothing malicious as well, it was just a hypothetical I made up for the sake of argument.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?