Comments on: Expertise lacking among climate skeptics?

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:01:30 +0000

This, and many other critical issues would be resolved if the human population was reduced to 500,000,000.

By: Manu Ganji

Manu Ganji — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:21:30 +0000

Elizabeth’s arguments are good and the parameters used in the study do sound convincing.Time’s running out and I think we need to conclude the debate fast so we can bring in some solid effort.

By: seen it

seen it — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:44:46 +0000

woops – I meant “I don’t have time to look this up” instead of “I don’t have to look this up”.

By: seen it

seen it — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:42:06 +0000

In the 1990′s in Silicon Valley, I noticed that rains were always heaviest on weekends when I wanted to go on hikes in the nearby hills. A study a few years later (sorry, I don’t have to look this up) confirmed my observation. Whoever put the study together theorized that the heat of cars is making a warm bubble over cities that keeps the rain away until the weekends, when fewer cars are on the road and the bubble bursts. If we can change short-term weather, why, with all the amazing things we’ve done to this earth (stripping millions of acres of trees, etc., blow it up if we want to ) would anyone think we can’t affect long-term weather? And just how long-term does long-term have to be before people accept that the heat we’ve created on purpose or not in the course of making our lives more convenient has consequences?

By: Jon Rom

Jon Rom — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:37:07 +0000

Along with the majority of folks commenting here, I REALLY don’t care what 97% of leading scientists think. The Truth has nothing to do with the facts, or with evidence, or with proven scientific research. The Truth is more important than facts. “Just the facts ma’am” (as Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet) is an old idea that has no relevance in our society today.

Get over it, liberals – the Enlightenment ended 100′s of years ago. We are in a new age. Nobody cares about your stupid facts. If you liberals care about something you need to find a better way to convince people than quoting stuupid facts, or even 100′s of smart scientists…

This is not a conversation about what is true, it is a political struggle, with our wonderful immensely powerful energy corporations, plus a majority of the US public, on the side of the Truth. Are YOU liberals even able to imagine fighting with us? I don’t think so – we have most of the guns and we’re getting more. The 60′s are SO over.

Goodnight…its getting dark.

By: Jill

Jill — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:34:55 +0000

Opinions on climate change issues (who’s in the majority) have changed over the past 25 years so I don’t think that this constitutes “proof” one way or another. The issues in my opinion are : “is the climate changing” and “do we want to continue this trend”. It doesn’t really matter if it’s cows or people or just the way the earth works that is causing it.
Once these questions have been answered (I think the second one might provoke some discussion from Canada and other northern countries) and if the answer to question 2 is “no we don’t” then we do something about it. We need to look at what can be done and if it is something that can be affected by humans, ie reduce carbon emissions. Mankind has been characterized as the most adaptable animal in part because we have spread out and covered most of the world. I believe that mankind is not hugely adaptable – we adapt the world to suit ourselves – just sometimes we get it wrong.
I personally think that the climate has been changing and it is hotter now with the resultant weather disruptions. I mean, even my gardening centre has mentioned to me that planting season is now about 2 weeks earlier.
I also think that we are a long way from completely understanding the interactions of the Earth as a system. But our choices become – wait until we understand it, at which point we may be on the way to extinction; or do our best with the knowledge we have and revise our models regularly

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:04:28 +0000

Dr. Hattner, Please elaborate on your two observations about the IPCC investigation. The first statement is rather alarming. Are you saying the panel established by the UN actually prevented the publication of physical and electronic peer-reviewed papers written by scientists, who have serious credentials in climate science research (i.e. graduate degrees with years of climate science field and laboratory research experience)? Did the IPCC prevent contrary evidence into its final assessment? Please clarify. I thought very prestigious science journals like Nature and Science (and I will include the IPCC work group into this category) preview submitted articles on the basis of number and type of references and quality of work reported? The Futurity article claims that climate science expertise was evaluated was based on a minimum of 20 papers on climate research. That figure doesn’t seem unreasonable. Perhaps the IPCC shared a similar approach to who and what can make the final edition of the assessment? Your second comment puzzles me a bit too. Who funds climate science? I would assume NSF, UN, EU, and other large agencies. What would be the motivation for these large agencies to collect data on non-human CO2 production? The controversy whether humans cause global warming or not is so large that I think we need even more money and effort concentrating on connecting the dots between fossil fuel use and rising CO2 levels. Let me put my point another way. Would similar agencies (e.g. NIH) spend money and time collecting information on proving asbestos does not cause cancer, rather something else causes the same kind of cancer people get when exposed to asbestos? Or how about skin cancer is not caused by UV exposure? Who is going to fund those kinds of studies?

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:37:13 +0000

Jack, You claim ‘there is no real way to prove climate change is caused by humans…’ but you don’t follow up with what is wrong with the current evidence linking people’s use of fossil fuels and rising CO2 levels leading to rising global air and water temps. What is wrong with ice cores, tree rings, unequal heating of the earth’s atmosphere, and the fact that humans burning fossil fuels produces CO2 (known to absorb infrared radiation from the earth.) The increase in CO2 levels will cause a positive feedback in the amount of water vapor and methane (much worse greenhouse gases than CO2).

By: Prem

Prem — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:40:27 +0000

the metrics used to determine the “relevance” of a paper or study has absolutely nothing to do with the veracity or accuracy of the information.

I personally accept the majority view, but that says nothing about how pathetic an argument being made by this study.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:17:50 +0000

When the scientific community actively suppresses publication of articles with which it has politically motivated disagreement and then uses the dearth of published articles to support a conclusion I can only laugh.