Global cooling back again?

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Quote:

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?

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.

Quote:

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.

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.

Quote:

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.

The companies making record profits are in a more desperate position than those whose entire industry is based off of "feel-good" buyers and government subsidies?

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

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'd be curious to see if the downward temperature trend continues as more and more energy efficient technologies come about. I know that alone wouldn't prove anything, but still I'm curious.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?